Water Bodies Sampled: Attean Pond, Brassuca Lake, Chemquasabamticook Lake, Lake George, Haymock Lake, Long pond (Moose River), Portage Lake, Pushaw Lake, Sebago Lake, Sebec Lake, Square Lake, Stillwater (Penobscot) River, Wood Pond. Methods Crowd-Sourcing through Experiment.com Ken Hotopp worked with Experiment.com to create a profile for this project that potential donors could view to learn about the project Experiment.com informed us that videos greatly increase the success rate of funding, so we made a short video detailing our project Emma recording GPS data in an abandoned chair found on the shores of an inlet to Pushaw Lake. Data Collection Ken Hotopp identified water bodies to search for S. mighelsi using Google Maps, and then ideal sites on these water bodies were located in order to sample a variety of habitats on each water body. We visited these sites and collected individuals from all snail species found. Search protocol consisted of inspecting the shore from the the wrack line to a water depth of one to two feet. Samples were stored in alcohol (live samples) or dry (shell only) and taken back to the lab for identification Data were analyzed using statistical package R to determine correlations between species presence and lake characteristics such as water chemistry Pond snail (Lymnaea elodes) specimens from Kettle Cove on Sebago Lake. This species is very closely related to S. mighelsi, and Dr. Judy Roe at UMPI is going to do genetic work on S. mighelsi and L. elodes to determine how closely related they are. Introduction Stagnicola mighlesi is a freshwater snails that lives only in Maine Today, the snail has been lost in half of its original Fish River Lakes stronghold and now only is present in big, remote, and clean lakes It is possible that there are undiscovered populations of this snail Learning about this snail will provide us information about the health of Maine’s lakes and rivers Stagnicola mighlesi is an important part of the food chain and helps keep lakes free of algae Discovering Maine’s Own Freshwater Snail Emma Donohoe ‘14 and Alice Hotopp ’15 History Stagnicola mighelsi was first discovered in 1842 by Alexander Longfellow (brother of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). Longfellow sent his specimens to Dr. Jesse Wedgewood Mighels, who included these snails in his 1843 catalogue of Maine’s marine, freshwater, and terrestrial snails. Mighels sold his specimes to the Portland Society of Natural History, where they were destroyed by a large fire in Subsequent explorers were not able to re-locate the “type locality” where the snails were first found until Olof Nylander in Nylander published his findings on Stagnicola mighelsi (considered a subspecies of Stagnicola emarginata at the time), which he eventually identified from several lakes, as well as populations of the closely-related Stagnicola oronoensis and Stagnicola emarginata. Results Our target species, Stagnicola mighelsi, was only found at Square Lake, a place we already knew that it lived. None of the other big, undammed, clean lakes that we searched contained this special snail. We determined that non-native invasive snails like Cipangaludina chinesis are absent from the remote lakes we searched. Helisoma anceps, a type of ramshorn snail (Family Planorbidae) was the most widespread snail. The water bodies with highest species richness were Pushaw Lake (7), and the Stillwater River near Orono (6). No correlations were found between S. mighlesi presence and water chemistry References Martin, S.M Freshwater snails (Mollusca: Gastropoda) of Maine. Northeastern Naturalist 6(1): Thanks to the Colby Biology Department for their generous donation, our donors on Experiment.com, and special Thanks to Ken Hotopp, who planned this project and taught us to be good field and lab assistants. Research Questions What is the true range of this snail in the state? What environmental factors are correlated with surviving populations? Left: Alice marks specimens collected at Attean Pond Right: Alice searching for specimens on a promising shore Live S. mighlesi Discussion We are unable to predict the presence of S. mighelsi. We found no correlation between lake size or health and the presence of our snail. Our data do indicate that the species is incredibly rare, as it was found in only one of the lakes we surveyed. That there was no correlation found between our species’ presence and water chemistry indicates either that it is extremely rare or that we need more data points. This “negative data” will be useful in assessing the conservation needs of S. mighelsi. Our next step is to determine the genetic relationship between various snail species in the state. Live S. mighelsi specimens collected from Square Lake will be used by Dr. Judy Roe at the University of Maine Presque Isle for genetic research on these relationships. Heliosoma anceps, the most abundant snail species on the lakes surveyed