The Freshwater Mussels (Unionoida) of the World (and other less consequential bivalves)

FM(U)otW(aolcb) is the web version of the MUSSEL Project Database. Follow the links to browse the data or use the custom Google search field. Either way, you win!

For each taxon, information is provided regarding habitat, horizon (Recent unless otherwise listed), and diversity. We are actively working on the Recent freshwater mussels, and those are the taxa for which the data are most complete. For other Recent freshwater bivalves, the information largely follows Graf (2013). For other taxa (e.g., marine, fossil), any content is largely incidental.

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Bivalvia | Unionoida | Unionoidea

family MARGARITIFERIDAE Henderson, 1929
     5 nominal families as synonyms | cladomics

Global Distribution of the Margaritiferidae. The thin purple wedge of the pie depicts the relative Recent species diversity of the family (15 of 1020).

The Margaritiferidae consists of only 15 Recent species, and although the distribution of the family is patchy, it is found in Nearctica, Palearctica and Indotropica. Various genus-level classifications have been used over the years, and until recently we have regarded the family to represent a single genus. New phylogenetic information now divides the species among 4 Recent genera in two subfamilies.

subfamily MARGARITIFERINAE Henderson, 1929: 11 Recent species. 4 family-group synonyms | 3 genera| cladomics Distribution: East Asia, North America, North Eurasia.

subfamily GIBBOSULINAE Bogan, Bolotov, Froufe & Lopes-Lima in Lopes-Lima et al., 2018: 4 Recent species. 1 family-group synonym | 1 genus| cladomics Distribution: East Asia.

genus Asturianaia Delevene, Munt, Piñuela & García-Ramos, 2016: fossil only. 1 generic synonym | 2 valid species | cladomics

genus Discunio Starobogatov, 1970: fossil only. 1 generic synonym | 1 valid species | cladomics

genus Martinsoniconcha Starobogatov, 1970: fossil only. 1 generic synonym | 1 valid species | cladomics

genus Mengyinaia Chen, 1984: fossil only. 1 generic synonym | 1 valid species | cladomics

genus Proarcidopsis Starobogatov, 1970: fossil only. 1 generic synonym | 1 valid species | cladomics

genus Shifangella Liu & Luo in Liu, 1981: fossil only. 3 generic synonyms | 3 valid species | cladomics

Page updated: 09:55:43 Tue 01 Jul 2025