Merrily They Roll Along

From January, 1995 (update #23)

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - How fast do zebra mussels travel from inland lakes downstream into small streams? Not that fast, according to Gary Lamberti, a biology professor at the University of Notre Dame. For the past two years, Lamberti and colleagues have received U.S. Environmental Protection Agency funding to study zebra mussels in inland streams. In Turkey Creek, a small stream flowing southeast from the zebra mussel- rich Lake Wawasee/Syracuse Lake complex, zebra mussels have only spread several kilometers downstream during the last year. In 1993, Lamberti's team found no mussels farther than 500 meters (less than a third of a mile) downstream from the lake. In 1994, mussels had gone seven kilometers (four-and-a-half miles) downstream, and mussel numbers declined exponentially from the lake outlet to their furthest distance from the lake. A similar pattern of mussel dispersal has been at work in Christiana Creek, a stream flowing from the infested Eagle Lake/Christiana Lake complex in southwestern Michigan. Between 1993 and 1994, the main difference was a shift toward larger, older individuals. Lamberti said he believes that "factors controlling zebra mussel dispersal and population dynamics in streams are quite different than those operating in lakes." Results from the study will be presented at the Fifth Annual Zebra Mussel Conference in Toronto this February.

ID: 199501-10.

The Zebra Mussel Update was a 4- to 8-page quarterly national newsletter published by the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute from May 1990 through May 1997. The ZMU documented the spread of the zebra mussel -- an exotic nuisance mussel -- through North America's freshwater environments, especially the Great Lakes, and on efforts to control it.