Report a New Location for the New Zealand Mudsnail

There are 2 or 3 ways to report new locations, depending on your snail expertise.

1. Provide a Snail Sample with the Collection Data

  1. Collect 10-20 of the suspect snails and place them directly into a vial of 70-95% ethanol (rubbing alcohol will also work) Please check our identification page to be sure your snails are even close.

  2. Provide as much of the following information as possible.
    1. State and County:
    2. Water Body and Location: The name of the water body and the access point, something like "Madison River at Bakers Hole".
    3. Latitude and longitude: These can be input as decimal degrees, degrees and decimal minutes, or degrees, minutes and decimal seconds. You can use Graphical Locater to help find, verify and convert location data.
    4. Collection Date: The month, day and year.
    5. Field Collector:The person or people who made the field collection.
    6. Mudsnail Density: Select 1 of 3 crude levels (sparse, moderate or abundant). Use moderate if unsure. Sparse populations are generally not even noticed while in the field. Sparse populations may range up to a few hundred per square meter. Note that 100 per square meter is only 1 snail per 100 square cm, and for a 5 mm snail in a complex 3-dimensional environment with various substrates, this is barely noticeable. Moderate populations are more like a few thousand per square meter. Abundant implies the snails are pretty much everywhere.
    7. Comments: These might include notes on the snail's range up and down the river, the date of first sighting, site description, measured snail density, size, etc.

  3. Label the container inside and outside with pencil or an alcohol proof pen.

  4. For shipping, place the snails into small vials to minimize the volume of alcohol (a few drops should do). Pad the vials with paper towels and seal them in a plastic bag for extra protection. Then pack them into a well padded package.

  5. Send the package to:
    Dan Gustafson
    Department of Ecology
    Montana State University
    Bozeman MT 59717-3460

2. Report a Suspect Location Only

Just send an e-mail to Dan Gustafson dlg@rapid.msu.montana.edu and provide enough details so that the site can be accessed. I, or others, will try to check it out when the opportunity arises. No promises here, but new locations in the Greater Montana area will likely get checked fairly soon.

3. Report the Collection Data Directly

Researchers who can reliably identify Potamopyrgus antipodarum within their area, are encouraged to enter their collection data directly into our system. There is a form that allows easy entry of the basic data. Arrangements can also be made to import data from various databases for researchers with a large amount of data already entered.
02 FEB 2002, updated on 2005 FEB 05 dlg@rapid.msu.montana.edu