For the clergyman and diplomat, see William H. Heard (ambassador)

William H. Heard (ambassador)

William Henry Heard was a clergyman of the African Methodist Episcopal Church who served as United States Ambassador to Liberia from 1895 through 1898.Heard was born a slave in Elbert County, Georgia...

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William Henry Heard (born about 1930 in Michigan

Michigan

Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

) is a malacologist, and an authority on freshwater mollusks, especially freshwater pelecypods (clams). He is an emeritus professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, at Florida State University

Florida State University

The Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...

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Heard was the winner of the "Lifetime Achievement Award" for 2001 from the Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society. He has had two species of mayflies named in his honor: Symbiocloeon heardi Müller-Liebenau and Povilla heardi Hubbard. Heard discovered these insects in Thailand

Thailand

Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

, where they were living within the shells of freshwater clams.

Selected publications

• Comparative life histories of North American pill clams (Sphaeriidae: Pisidium). 1965. Malacologia, 2: 381-411

• Recent Eupera (Pelecypoda; Sphaeriidae) in the United States. 1965. Amer. Midland Nat. 74(2): 309-317

• A re-evaluation of the recent Unionacea (Pelecypoda) of North America. Malacologia, 10(2): 333-355 (with R. H. Guckert)

• Anatomical systematics of freshwater mussels. 1974. Malacol. Rev., 7: 41-42

• Reproduction of fingernail clams (Sphaeriidae: Sphaerium and Musculium). 1977. Malacologia, 16: 421-455

• Identification Manual of the Freshwater Clams of Florida. 1979. Fla. Dept. Environmental Regulation, Technical Series 4(2): 1-83. (available for download: [ftp://ftp.dep.state.fl.us/pub/labs/biology/biokeys/clams.pdf])

• Bivalvia I. 1998. 145pp. Soc. Experimental and Descriptive Malacology. (editor, with John B. Burch
  John B. Burch
  John Bayard Burch is an American zoologist, a biology professor at the University of Michigan, and is the Curator of Mollusks at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. His research interests are broad, and have encompassed not only the anatomy, systematics, and genetics of mollusks, but...
  
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