What's a Quagga Mussel?

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From February 19, 1992 (update #12)

BUFFALO, N.Y. - The zebra mussels in the Great Lakes may consist of more than one species, according to work presented here by Ellen Marsden of the Illinois Natural History Survey at the November 1991 Great Lakes Sea Grant Network's second annual International Conference on Zebra Mussel Research. Based on allozyme electrophoresis analysis of mussels collected throughout the Great Lakes, Marsden identified a distinctly different genetic group of "zebra" mussels. She tagged these divergent mussels with the name "quagga mussels" - quagga being an extinct zebra-like African horse - until taxonomists have a closer look. Although she reported that quagga mussels are probably a different species of the genus Dreissena, Marsden suggested that they are probably one of several forms of Dreissena found in Europe and Central Asia. If and, if so, how the presence of two distinctly different genetic populations of this genus will affect control strategies and their ecological effects currently remains a matter of speculation.

ID: 19920219-12.

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.