A Few Interesting Things

I've got a few things I wanted to post about but just never did. These are those things.

Frog-faced Snail
Going up thru Tunkhannock (Wyoming County) on my way to Ithaca I stopped and grabbed some leaf litter around a seasonal water source near a seep and along the side of the road. My collection device was a gallon bag and it was filled with wet litter, pretty much all water to the top couple inches of the leaf litter. Soon all the snails in the litter climbed up to the top and were easy to collect.

Eight of the snails (all same species) I couldn't even get to genus-- and it might be some form of freshwater/semiterrestrial.  Here's there lowdown:

1. No operculum
2. No long antennae, their eyes were just on the head
3. I saw them open their pneumostomes in air
4. No proboscis so Pomatiopsis is out.
5. About 4mm each

Here are some pics I grabbed:

The snail is seemingly in water up top because I sprinkled with water to get him to walk around. I have others without it soaked in water, but after it hid itself back up I sprayed it to coax it out. This just happens to be what I think is the best picture that shows what it looks like.

Tree Slugs

I can't find the photos for this one, but during the summer while I was beating branches for caterpillars I had some Philomycids come falling down. This was up at Bear Creek Natural Area near Wilkes-Barre, PA. I believe they were Megapallifera mutabilis. I just thought it was interesting because they were up at least 6 feet, likely more. Obviously there are tree slugs and snails elsewhere, but it seems like there's no mention of them higher up in trees up here in the northeast. 

Black-footed Succineid

From wikipedia, 

A dark marking on the posterior surface of the foot is distinctive.

That's talking about Novisuccinea chittenangoensis, the Chittenango Ovate Ambersnail. I guess that's open for interpretation without an accompanying photo or figure. But I did find this:

That's a succineid on my hand that I found at Nescopeck State Park and that line played thru my mind when I found it, in Pennsylvania, in a dry field of debris. I obviously don't think it's the same species, in fact, I've pretty much given up on identifying succineids. But it's interesting, hence the title of the post. It's the only one I've ever found with a mark like that in all the succineids I've found (and I swear I find more of them than any other family so it kind of chafes me I can't identify them). There were multiple individuals easily found alongside some Ventridens species.