OutdoorNebraska

19 It is common, when visiting a site, to find mussel shells in all of the stages mentioned above. When mapping the results of a single field collection, only the best condition shell is mapped. So, if you see an orange dot, you know that live or fresh dead shell were found and we ignore the rest. If there is a black dot, you know that only dead or relict shell were found. A black "X" means only relict shell were present. Mussel shell have also been collected from archeological digs. These are shell that were collected by the native peoples, were cooked and eaten and the shells discarded or reused as ornaments or tools. These sites could be only a few hundred years old to a couple thousand years. These collections indicate what species of freshwater mussel were living in waterbodies in that area and suggest, what may have been the historic range of a species. Very often, these shell are decent condition so are not too hard to identify. These collections are shown by an open circle. The Mapping Process I attempted to use all available data to create the maps. The data used comes from three main sources; my own collections, published literature and museum records. These were entered into a spreadsheet which, at this time, has 2,433 records. A "record" is a collection of mussels from a single site on a single day. This collection may have been of a single valve or dozens of shell of multiple species. All represent a single record. This table summarizes the sources of the data in the database. "Ellet Hoke" has surveyed and published reports on the mussels in 12 of Nebraska's 13 river basins. "Published reports" are additional publications that provide data on the collections of mussels from Nebraska waters. You can find the citations for both the "Ellet Hoke" and "Published reports" in the Literature section at the end of this guide. "Universities" are collections that have not been published as yet. "NGPC staff" are miscellaneous collections by employees of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. "Museum records" are records that were found in the collections databases of three museums: The University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, the United States National Museum and The Ohio State Museum of Biological Diversity. "Citizens" are shells that were collected by citizens for which I provided ID assistance. Schainost 1159 Ellet Hoke 564 Published reports 450 Universities 95 NGPC staff 79 Museum records 70 Citizens 23

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