Top 10 favorite endangered invertebrate species.

[Gloria]

Read a Xerces piece about how a vote for the top 10 endangered species did not contain a single invertebrate. So I'm thinking we could offer up a list of North American top 10 endangered invertebrate for contention.
I nominate The Franklin Bumble Bee and maybe the Burying Beetle for a start. South Dakota Ecological Services Field Office: American Burying Beetle

Can you help out here? What are your favorites? List as many as 10 if you want but try at least one and we can vote if there are more than 10 by June 1st.
If your game that is...

[recurve]

How about the Karner blue butterfly, and some love for our less appreciated and sometimes overlooked endangered invertebrates the freshwater mussels. I nominate the Northern riffleshell and the Winged maple leak mussels.

[Gloria]

Good choices recurve!
Help us out here WG...we need to elevate the status of our most unloved. Which species of invertebrate do you think just knowing a little better could help people learn to love?

[recurve]

Ooops that should be winged maple LEAFmussel!

[NEWisc]

Here's a few from the Wisconsin endangered and threatened species list that I would like to see get more attention:
Swamp Metalmark (Calephelis mutica)
Northern Blue Butterfly (Lycaeides idas)
Hine’s Emerald Dragonfly (Somatochlora hineana)
Pecatonica River Mayfly (Acanthametropus pecatonica)
Spatterdock Darner Dragonfly (Aeshna mutata)

This link lists the federally threatened and endangered species:
http://www.fws.gov/endangered/species/us-species.html

And this link shows the federally threatened and endangered species occurring in each state:
http://www.fws.gov/endangered/species/

[turttle]

I vote for the Carolina heelsplitter, on the grounds it has the best name. I had no idea what the heck it was before I looked it up. It is a freshwater mussel - presumably painful to step on!

Also the St Francis' satyr butterfly, but I think butterflies get all of the press.

[Gloria]

NEWisc,a Pecatonica River Mayfly is certainly an interesting choice. Butterflies are beautiful but cool is good too.
Turtle, a name to remember is good strategy to bring attention to invertebrates.
This is good! Any more???

[Gloria]

A good date to announce the "Wildlife Gardeners Top 10 Favorite Endangered Invertebrate Species"(is that a mouthful or what) might be the Spring Equinox in June? What do you think.
Keep adding species names that you would like to see get attention. We can decide the top 10 later.

[Gloria]

After we choose the top 10 we can put together a page of information on each of the species for those interested to find out why these species are "Tops".
Hey Staff...is it ok if we do this?

[WG Admin]

Gloria-

Good idea. Run with it.