Subspecies within the species Margaritifera magaritifera include:
• Margaritifera margaritifera … See more

The freshwater pearl mussel is one of the longest-living invertebrates in existence. The oldest known specimen in Europe was caught in 1993 in Estonia when it was 134 years old.
Like all biv… See more

The native distribution of this species is Holarctic. The freshwater pearl mussel can be found on both sides of the Atlantic, from the Arctic and temperate regions of western Russia, through Europe to northeastern North Amer… See more

Clean, fast-flowing streams and rivers are required for the freshwater pearl mussel, where it lives buried or partly buried in fine gravel and coarse sand, generally in water at depths between 0.5 and 2 metres, but sometimes … See more

Capable of living for up to 130 years, the freshwater pearl mussel begins life as a tiny larva, measuring just 0.6 to 0.7 millimetres long, which is ejected into the water from an adult mussel in a mass of one to four million othe… See more

Once the most abundant bivalve mollusc in ancient rivers around the world, numbers of the freshwater pearl mussel are now declining in all countries and this species is nearly extinct in many areas. The causes of this declin… See more

• Anonymous 2004. Margaritifera margaritifera. Stage 1 and Stage 2 survey guidelines. Irish Wildlife Manuals, No. 12. National Parks and Wildlife Service, Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Gove… See more