Shell small, aurface finely striated, sculpture more pronounced around umbo. Hinge plate narrow, cardinal teeth straight. Ligament externally visible. Inner radial mantle muscles weak, forming six to eight bundles. Nephridia of the open type.
Euglesa aslini (Kuiper, 1983)
Common name: Pea shell, pea clam, pill clam
Class Bivalvia
Infraclass Heteroconchia
Cohort Heterodonta
Megaorder Neoheterodontei
Order Sphaeriida
Superfamily Sphaerioidea
Family Sphaeriidae
Genus Euglesa Jenyns, 1832 (Type species: Euglesa henslowiana Jenyns, 1832 (= Pisidium personatum Malm, 1855) (also sometimes cited as Tellina pusilla Gmelin, 1791)
Original name: Pisidium aslini Kuiper,1983. In Kuiper, J. G. J. (1983). The Sphaeriidae of Australia. Basteria 47: 3-52.
Type locality: Left bank at junction of Moleside Creek, Glenelg River, Victoria.
Originally included in the subgenus Afropisidium by Kuiper (1983), a genus-group name introduced for an African species but is now considered to be a synonym of Euglesa. Afropisidium was considered to be a subgenus of Pisidium by earlier workers and was treated as such in earlier versions of this key. Then Molecular studies (e.g. Lee and Ó Foighil, 2003) showed that Afropisidium was a distinct genus. Most recently, Bespalaya et al. (2024) introduced the genus name Hindupisidium for some Asian species previously included in Afropisidium because the type species of Afropisidium and other African species clustered with Euglesia in an analysis by Clewing et al. (2022) while the Asian species formed a completely different clade. Regrettably the Australian species previously attributed to Afropisidium on morphological grounds has not been sequenced.
Shallow burrower, suspension and deposit feeder. Inhabits creeks, is often associated with Euglesa tasmanica (Korniushin, 2000). Broods young.
Western Victoria and northern Tasmania.
Beesley, P. L., Ross, G. J. B. & Wells, A., Eds. (1998). Mollusca: The Southern Synthesis. Parts A & B. Melbourne, CSIRO Publishing.
Bespalaya, Y. V., Vinarski, M. V., Aksenova, O. V., Babushkin, E. S., Gofarov, M.Y., Kondakov, A. V., Konopleva, E. S., Kropotin, A. V., Mabrouki, Y., Ovchankova, N. B., Palatov, D. M., Sokolova, S. E., Shevchenko, O. V. T., Abdelkhaleq, F. T., Soboleva, A. A., Zubrii, N. A. & Bolotov, I. N. (2024). Phylogeny, taxonomy, and biogeography of the Sphaeriinae (Bivalvia: Sphaeriidae). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 201: 305-338.
Korniushin, A. V. (2000). Review of the family Sphaeriidae (Mollusca: Bivalvia) of Australia, with the description of four new species. Records of the Australian Museum 52: 41-102.
Korniushin, A. V. & Glaubrecht, M. (2002). Morphological characters analysis, the intergroup phylogenetic relationships and possible outgroups of the family Sphaeriidae (Mollusca, Bivalvia). Vestbuj zoologii 36(4): 3-22.
Kuiper, J. G. J. (1962). Note sur la systematique des pisidies. Journal de Conchyliologie 102: 53-57.
Kuiper, J. G. J. (1983). The Sphaeriidae of Australia. Basteria 47: 3-52.
Lamprell, K. & Healy, J. (1998). Bivalves of Australia, volume 2. Leiden, Backhuys Publishers.
Lee, T. (2019). Sphaeriidae Deshayes, 1855 (1820). Pp. 197-201 in C. Lydeard & Cummings, K. S. Freshwater Mollusks of the World: a Distribution Atlas. Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press.
Lee, T. & Ó Foighil, D. (2003). Phylogenetic structure of the Sphaeriinae, a global clade of freshwater bivalve molluscs, inferred from nuclear (ITS-1) and mitochondrial (16S) ribosomal gene sequences. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 137: 245-260.
