Photo 89204859, (c) Corey Lange, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Corey Lange

Attribution © Corey Lange
some rights reserved
Uploaded by coreyjlange coreyjlange
Source iNaturalist
Associated observations

Photos / Sounds

What

Long Valley Pyrg (Pyrgulopsis longae)

Observer

coreyjlange

Date

August 7, 2020 07:32 AM PDT

Description

It took me some sleuthing to figure out where the actual type locality for this species was located. This species was described by Hershler (1995), and the type locality information provided was:

"Type locality: Unnamed spring about 4.8 km west-southwest of Hallelujah Junction, Long Valley, Lassen County, California, T. 22 N, R. 17 E, SW 1/4 sec. 9 (Figure 4E). Holotype, USNM 860642 (Figure 5E); paratypes, USNM 858262, collected by R. Hershler and D. Sada, 3 August 1990. Snails were commonly found on stones and in watercress of this large spring, which was situated adjacent to a residence and had been recently excavated."

"Remarks: This species is known only from the type locality in the southern end of the Honey Lake basin (Figure 6)."

The township and range described in the paper was wrong, as no springs matching the description provided were located there. However, using Google Earth I was able to identify a few possible spring candidates that could be the type locality approximately 4.8 km southwest of Hallelujah Junction. All of the springs that I thought could have been the type locality were located on private land owned by the City of Santa Clara. I obtained written permission to visit the property and quickly located the type locality spring behind the abandoned house on the property. Springsnails were not overly common in the spring, and the spring had been previously developed in the past. There was also evidence of use of the spring by cattle. I've attached two photos of the spring to this observation. I checked nearby springs to see if I could find springsnails, but I found no Pyrgulopsis in any other nearby springs.

The correct Township and Range for this spring and type locality would be: T. 22 N, R. 17 E, SE 1/4 sec. 17

https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/11299/iz_Hershler1995.pdf

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