Materials and Methods

Most of the records documented here are the result of a reconnaissance survey of the upper Fraser Basin in July 2001. The primary purpose was to obtain specimens and data of terrestrial molluscs for the Royal British Columbia Museum. Time limitations prevented us from surveying the expansive plateau area west of Williams Lake and Quesnel, and our efforts were concentrated in the areas to the east and west of Prince George and around Quesnel. Most of the collections documented in this report are from along or near highways and other roads. Few collections were made at high-elevation sites.

Specimens were collected by hand picking from soil, leaf litter, rocks, logs and other dead wood, and were incorporated into the Invertebrate Zoology Collection of the Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria (RBCM). All slug and some snail material were drowned in water (to relax animal and extend the bodies), then preserved in 70% EtOH (ethyl alcohol). A portion of the shelled snail material was put directly into EtOH, dried later in the lab for the dry collection.

Figure 2 Collection localities (from all sources) Fraser Basin (see Appendix for data).

Specimens from my personal study collection (RGF) and some material from the Canadian Museum of Nature (CMN) were examined, and their data included in this report. However, the collection of the CMN was not exhaustively studied, as much of the material was inaccessible to me.

I also briefly include the catalogue number for one lot of Succineidae that were cited by Harris & Hubricht (1982) from the upper Fraser Basin and now part of the Invertebrate Collection of the Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH, Chicago). I have not attempted, however, to verify these identifications, nor have I tried to identify to species any of the succineids that I have seen.

While in the field, locality geopositions were acquired using a hand held GPS; these readings were subsequently checked on National Topographic Series 1:50,000-scale paper maps or electronic versions of these maps. Some earlier museum collections lack precise position data (most CMN records, for example) and an approximate position was derived from maps for mapping purposes. Elevations above sea level (abbreviated as a.s.l.) presented in the Appendix and elsewhere are approximate, having been secondarily derived from maps and in most cases converted from feet to metres.

This report uses the same nomenclature as appears in Land Snails of British Columbia (Forsyth 2004).

Terrestrial Gastropods ...   
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