Authors for this Resource
Ken Hotopp
The late Kenneth P. Hotopp (1960 –2019) passed away at age 58 on 7 June 2019.
Ken’s work focused on land snails of the Appalachian area. He was a superb naturalist, with extensive knowledge about a wide variety of plants and animals. He was a research associate in the Section of Mollusks at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, from 2002-2019. He published 8 articles on snails, including naming a new subspecies of land snail (Triodopsis juxtidens robinae) after his wife, and authored 13 unpublished reports on snails.
He had nearly finished this web resource on land snails of the northeastern USA when he passed away. This project grew from two previous versions of land snail web resources, one about Pennsylvania, later modified to include Virginia.
Another of Ken’s projects, still in the works, is a field guide to land snails of New York. Preliminary versions of that book have been useful to students and workers. A team continues working to complete that field guide.
Ken worked as a biologist for the Maryland Natural Heritage Program from 1990-1997. Later, he started Appalachian Conservation Biology, a consulting business specializing in ecology, conservation, and rare species inventory primarily of land snails but also including butterflies, salamanders, plants, and natural communities in the Appalachian Mountains.
Ken received a BS in forest biology in 1982 from SUNY ESF (Environmental Science and Forestry) in Syracuse, NY. He earned his MS degree in Ecology and Animal Behavior from SUNY, Albany in 1987 with a thesis on the foraging behavior of deer mice.
With his partner, Robin Gorrell, a small animal veterinarian Ken, Robin, and daughters Marian and Alice canoed, hiked, and cross-country skied wild places from West Virginia to Ontario, Canada. The family moved to Bethel, Maine in 2005. Ken’s father, Kenneth R. Hotopp (note middle initial R) frequently joined Ken on snail survey work and is listed as a collector on many specimens in museum collections.
Ken was a fierce defender of wilderness and the climate and worked locally to protect natural places and to participate in actions against climate change.
Publications by K.P. Hotopp
Hotopp, K.P. & Smith, D.A. 1995. Notes on land snails near Big Reed Pond in Piscataquis County, Maine. Maine Naturalist 3(2):103-106.
Hotopp, K.P. 2002. Land snails and soil calcium in Central Appalachian Mountain forest. Southeastern Naturalist 1(1):27-44
Hotopp, K.P. 2006. Patera panselenus (Hubricht, 1976) on the lower Cheat River, West Virginia (Gastropoda: Pulmonata: Polygyridae). Banisteria 27:40-43.
Hotopp, K.P., Pearce, T.A. & Dourson, D.C. 2008. Land Snails of the Cheat River Canyon, West Virginia (Gastropoda: Pulmonata). Banisteria 31:40-46.
Hotopp, K.P., Pearce, T.A., Nekola, J.C., & Schmidt, K. 2010. New land snail (Gastropoda: Pulmonata) distribution records for New York State. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 159:25-30.
Pearce, T.A. & Hotopp, K.P. 2011. Federally endangered land snail Polygyriscus virginianus (Burch, 1947) still alive in Pulaski County, Virginia, USA (Gastropoda: Helicodiscidae).Tentacle, Mollusk Conservation Newsletter (19):27-28.
Beier, C.M., Woods, A.M., Hotopp, K.P., Gibbs, J.P., Mitchell, M.J., Dovčiak, M., Leopold, D.J., Lawrence, G.B. & Page, D.B. 2012. Variability in gastropod and amphibian communities along a soil calcium gradient in Adirondack northern hardwood forests. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 42:1141-1152.
Hotopp, K.P. 2015. A new Triodopsis juxtidens subspecies (Gastropoda: Pulmonata) from West Virginia, U.S.A. Zootaxa 3914(4):490-494.
Web Resources by K.P. Hotopp:
Hotopp, K.P. & Pearce, T.A. 2006. Land Snails of Pennsylvania. Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Hotopp, K.P., Pearce, T.A., Nekola, J.C., Slapcinsky, J., Dourson, D.C., Winslow, M., Kimber, G. & Watson, B. 2013. Land Snails and Slugs of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States. Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Online at http://www.carnegiemnh.org/science/mollusks/
Unpublished Snail-Related Reports by K.P. Hotopp:
Hotopp, K.P. 2000. Cheat Threetooth (Triodopsis platysayoides Brooks) Inventory 2000. Report to the US Fish & Wildlife Service, West Virginia Field Office, and West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, Elkins, WV. 38pp.
Hotopp, K.P. 2000. Land snails at four Nature Conservancy preserves in West Virginia. Report to the West Virginia Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, Charleston, WV. 34pp. +attachments.
Hotopp, K.P., Pearce, T.A. & Grimm, F.W. 2003. Land snails of selected Pennsylvania Natural Areas. Report to Pennsylvania Dept. of Conservation & Natural Resources, Harrisburg, PA. 44pp.
Hotopp, K.P. 2003. Uncommon Pennsylvania land snails: supporting citations for state ranking. Unpublished report to the Pennsylvania Dept. of Conservation & Natural Resources, Harrisburg, PA. 40pp.
Hotopp, K.P. 2005. Land and freshwater snails of Great Falls and Turkey Run National Parks. Report to the National Park Service, McLean, VA. 26pp. +attachments.
Hotopp, K.P. 2006. Expert report: Opinion for conservation of the Cheat Threetooth (Triodopsis platysayoides Brooks). Report for legal proceedings to DiTrapano, Barrett & DiPiero, PPLC, Charleston, WV. 16pp.
Hotopp, K.P. 2006. Inventory for two butterflies and two land snails in West Virginia. Report to the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, Elkins, WV. 24pp.
Hotopp, K.P. and Pearce, T.A. 2007. Land snails in New York: statewide distributions and talus site faunas. Report to the New York State Biodiversity Research Institute, Albany, NY. 91pp.
Hotopp, K.P. and Pearce, T.A. 2008. Land snail distributions in West Virginia. Report to the Wildlife Resources Section, West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. 126pp.
Hotopp, K.P. 2012. Freshwater snail inventory of the Fish River lakes. Unpublished report to the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund, Pittston, ME. 47pp. +attachments.
Hotopp, K.P. and Roe, J.L. 2014. Discovering Maine’s Own Freshwater Snail. Crowdfunded project through experiment. Online at: https://experiment.com/projects/discovering-maine-s-own-freshwater-snail-part-1.
Hotopp, K.P., Watson, B.T., Pearce, T.A., Nekola, J.C. & Perez, K.E. 2014. Shaggy Coil Conservation Plan, September 2014. Report to Bureau of Wildlife Resources, Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, Richmond, VA. 23 pp.
Hotopp, K.P., Watson, B.T., Pearce, T.A., Nekola, J.C. & Perez, K.E. 2015. Rubble Coil Conservation Plan, March 2015. Report to Bureau of Wildlife Resources, Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, Richmond, VA. 30 pp.
Tim Pearce
Tim Pearce is Assistant Curator and Head of the Section of Mollusks at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He conducts malacological research on land snails and cares for and promotes use of the huge research collection of snails and clams (1.8 million specimens). While he has been studying mollusks for more than 40 years, for the past couple of decades, his land snail field research is primarily in northeastern USA, but his snail survey localities also include Madagascar, Kuril Islands (far eastern Asia), Colombia (South America), Turkey, as well as western North America and land snails in the vicinity of the Great Lakes. He has published dozens of papers on mollusks and has named 70 land snail species.
Jeffrey C. Nekola
Jeffrey C. Nekola is an Associate Professor in the Department of Botany and Zoology, Faculty of Sciences, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic where his recent studies on land snails have used molecular techniques in combination with morphology to focus on resolving relationships to among large groups of small species including Vertiginidae, Euconulidae, and Haplotrematidae.
Admirably, his research often addresses larger (continental-scale) questions related to molluscan diversity and he specializes in documenting the mechanisms that trigger biodiversity. He has described more than 20 taxa of mollusks, and has published more than 90 peer-reviewed scientific papers.
John Slapcinsky
John Slapcinsky is the Malacology Collections Manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History. He is an avid researcher on land snails around the world, primarily in SE Asia and in SE United States. His projects document diversity of terrestrial snails in under-sampled geographic areas and microhabitats. His multi-year effort to sample terrestrial snails of the Papuan Peninsula and nearby islands off eastern New Guinea suggests the area is much more diverse than previously known. His surveys in southeastern North America focus particularly on small species restricted to specialized habitats including seeps and springs. His dozens of publications on Mollusca include the naming of more than 90 new species.
Brian Watson
Brian Watson is the Aquatic Resources Biologist and State Malacologist for Virginia, at the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. His responsibility is conservation of freshwater mussels and clams, crayfishes, aquatic and terrestrial snails, and nongame fishes. His efforts have been crucial for elevating the awareness land snails in need of conservation, including helping to secure funding for terrestrial snail research in Virginia. He continues to be a strong advocate for conservation of mollusks.