Whats a quagga mussel?
Its a non-native mollusk on the march. Quagga (pronounced KWA-gah) mussels are cousins of zebra mussels, those crazy clams who came from Europe (most likely in ship ballast water) and spread in Lake Erie and elsewhere by the bazillions. Quagga mussels got here the same way and are doing the same thing. In fact, in the eastern part of Lake Erie, theyre giving their cousins the boot. Zebra mussels have greatly declined there, replaced whole-hog by quagga mussels. Western Lake Erie is in transition: the split is nearing 50:50. What gives quaggas a leg up, even though they dont have legs — theyre clams, for crying out loud! — is that they can tolerate cooler, deeper water. So they can live where zebras live and also where zebras cant. Otherwise the two are a lot alike. Both are about as big as your thumbnail. Both have dark stripes on their shells; the number and width of the stripes often varies. Both form colonies that coat rocks and clog pipes. And both change ecosystems dramatically.
