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Quagga mussel or Dreissean bugensis
The quagga mussels are small striped, freshwater mollusks that can live for three to five years. In a single breeding cycle, they can release 30,000 to 40,000 fertilized eggs, or 1 million fertilized eggs in a year.
Since at least 2007 or before they’ve been colonizing waterways in Arizona. With the warmer waters in Arizona, they can reproduce five to six times a year, quickly establishing themselves along the Colorado River and moving on to the Central Arizona Project that feed local reservoirs and Municiple cities in the Phoenix metro area.
As a filter feeder, the quagga mussel eats the phytoplankton that serves as the base of the food chain. In large enough numbers, they can disrupt ecosystems.
The biggest threat is quagga mussels’ ability to block Arizona’s most precious resource of water as colonies disrupt intakes and other commercial waterworks such as dam power generators by blocking water intake, gears and mechanical parts. Recreational activities could also be affected such as fishing, fouling propellers, boat hulls, engine water coolant intakes and causing other damage to boats.
Found on a tree limb that had been submerged for several months.
The quagga mussel is a species of freshwater mussel, an aquatic bivalve mollusk in the family Dreissenidae. It has an average lifespan of 3 to 5 years. The species is indigenous to the Dnipro River drainage of Ukraine, and is named after the quagga, an extinct subspecies of African zebra, possibly because, like the quagga, its stripes fade out towards the ventral side.
