Chambardia wahlbergi ( Krauss, 1848 )

Rapalai, Boikhutso Lerato, 2024, An annotated checklist of molluscs recorded from Botswana, Indago: Investigating nature and humanity in Africa (Oxford, England) 41 (10), pp. 15-44 : 19-20

7. Chambardia wahlbergi ( Krauss, 1848)

Distribution and year: Thamalakane River, Maun [ANSP185374] N/A ( Graf & Cummings 2023); Nata River, between Maitengwe and Nata police station [TMSA12237] N/A ( Appleton 1979; Graf & Cummings 2006); Maitengwe River N/A ( Graf & Cummings 2006); Lotsane River, Palapye N/A ( Connolly 1939).

Geographic range: Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Notes: This is the largest freshwater bivalve species in Africa, comprising six subspecies ( Appleton & Curtis 2007). The molluscs are capable of aestivating for up to two and a half years. Large specimens are used by fishermen as bait (Seddon & Van Damme 2018). There are speculations that this species has never been collected from the Okavango Delta ( Appleton & Curtis 2007), but a voucher specimen record from Thamalakane River [ANSP185374] exists in the Mussel Online Project Database ( Graf & Cummings 2023).

Type locality: Affen River , a tributary of the Limpopo River, South Africa ( Krauss 1848) .

Sources: Connolly (1939: 617); van Bruggen (1966 a: 110, as Aspatharia (Spathopsisi) wahlbergi ); Brown (1967: 487, as Aspatharia wahlbergi ); Appleton (1979: 166, as A. (S.) wahlbergi ); Mandahl-Barth (1988: 68); Graf & Cummings (2006: 180; 2023); Appleton & Curtis (2007: 51).

Conservation status: Least Concern.