Flag for Taxon: Common European Ambersnail (Succinea putris)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bouteloua | Common European Ambersnail (Succinea putris) |
overconfident computer vision suggestion? |
Oct. 18, 2019 17:35:16 +0000 | Not Resolved |
Comments
Here's a bit of a copypasta that @susanhewitt made to leave as a comment on C. putris observations: "Do you have a reason for suggesting that this is Succinea putris? Our Computer Vision AI (which currently is unreliable for most mollusks) often suggests that species, but Amber snails can be extremely difficult to identify precisely. Most of the time it would be better just to ID these to the the family level. https://idtools.org/id/mollusc/factsheet.php?name=Succineidae"
I don't myself know how common S. putris is in North America. If someone could check that in the literature it would be good. Is its distribution circumpolar?
This paper has a lot of comments about identification with dissection and says it might be a species complex, not sure about how common it is or range though. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4064906?seq=1
This field guide says it has been identified from Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Ontario in Canada (page 40). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289377614_Identifying_Land_Snails_and_Slugs_in_Canada_Introduced_Species_and_Native_Genera
Species level S. putris in North America have been moved back to family thanks to efforts from @astrobirder, mws, and others.
Knocking them back to family level will be work for the time being until we can sort out which species can reasonably be IDed to genus, or perhaps in some cases to the species level.
Checking out that previous stat:
As of Oct 18, 2019, there were 1,251 observations of Succinea putris at Needs ID or RG that were observed on Oct 17, 2019 or earlier.
There are now 467 from before Oct 17, 2019... but now 2,286 total and 736 in North America.
I sent 4 identify pages of S. putris back to family, so that's about 120. That's only 16% of the north american observations, though
New related discussion:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/84909219
As of now there are 1536 observations of "Succinea putris" in the Americas, while this species is absent there.
Species and even genus IDs in this family are all pretty dicey. I'm not sure we can rule out S. putris in the US because no one has really sorted out what S. putris is. USFWS claims they can tell species apart, but no one has done the properly thorough molecular work. So most IDs in this family should probably be bumped to family, at least in NA.
Note from @ginsengandsoon: "often identified to species vs. the more accurate Succineidae"
High priority(?): Research Grade & Needs ID observations in North America:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=research%2Cneeds_id&taxon_id=123943&place_id=97394
(As of Oct 18, 2019, there were 1,251 observations of Succinea putris at Needs ID or RG that were observed on Oct 17, 2019 or earlier.)