> Habitat & Distribution

This is an easily-overlooked inhabitant of an environment that can be difficult to sample.  Hershler & Thompson (1992) gave the range of L. tenuipes as "New Jersey south to Campeche, Mexico," extending through the West Indies.  The US National Museum contains records as far north as Maine.

Throughout this range, Littoridinops populations are characateristic of coastal rivers and estuaries, especially freshwater tidal marshes.  Our samples generally come from the blades of emergent vegetation, especially Typha, and floating organic debris.  FWGNA incidence rank I-4.

> Ecology & Life History

We are unaware of any good study of the ecology of Littoridinops.   Data on the range of salinity tolerated would be especially welcome.  Our limited collections have generally been made from waters that were, to judge by their vegetation and their taste, entirely fresh.  But L. tenuipes populations certainly certainly also range into environments that are at least slightly brackish, from which we have very few observations.

> Taxonomy & Systematics

Littoridinops is classified in the hydrobioid family Cochliopidae (Wilke et al. 2013).  Its penis is fringed with numerous papillae, strikingly distinct from all other hydrobioid taxa native to eastern North America.  See Liu et al. (2001) for a molecular phylogeny and Hershler & Thompson (1992) for a review of Littoridinops anatomy, within the larger context of the Cochliopidae.

> Supplementary Resources [PDF]

• Littoridinops distribution in Atlantic drainages (2023)
• Virginia species account with county distribution (2011)

> Essays

• Earlier versions of this website, online until August of 2016, adopted the large, broadly-inclusive concept of the Hydrobiidae (sl) following Kabat & Hershler (1993).  More recently the FWGNA project has shifted to the Wilke et al. (2013) classification system, distinguishing a much smaller Hydrobiidae (ss) and elevating many hydrobioid taxa previously ranked as subfamilies to the full family level.  For more details, see The Classification of the Hydrobioids.

> References

Hershler, R. & F. G. Thompson (1992)  A review of the aquatic gastropod subfamily Cochliopinae (Prosobranchia: Hydrobiidae).  Malacological Review Supplement 5: 1 - 140.
Kabat, A.R., and R. Hershler (1993) The prosobranch snail family Hydrobiidae (Gastropoda: Rissooidea): review of classification and supraspecific taxa. Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology 547:1-94.
Liu, H-P., R. Hershler, & F. G. Thompson (2001)  Phylogenetic relationships of the Cochliopinae (Rissooidea: Hydrobiidae): An enigmatic group of aquatic gastropods.  Molec. Phylog. Evol. 21: 17 - 25.  
Smith, D. G.  (1987)  The genus Littoridinops (Mesogastropoda: Hydrobiidae) in New England.  Veliger 29: 442 - 444.  
Thompson, F. G. (1968)  The Aquatic Snails of the Family Hydrobiidae of Peninsular Florida.  Gainesville: University of Florida Press.  268 pps.
Wilke T., Haase M., Hershler R., Liu H-P., Misof B., Ponder W. (2013)  Pushing short DNA fragments to the limit: Phylogenetic relationships of “hydrobioid” gastropods (Caenogastropoda: Rissooidea).  Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 66: 715 – 736.