Zebra mussels are small shellfish marked by alternating light and dark bands. They are typically two inches or less (roughly the size of a pistachio nut) in size and have a life span of four to eight years. Zebra mussels have an extremely high reproductive rate of 30,000‐1,000,000 new mussels per year and are able to reproduce at one year of age.
Zebra mussels begin life as tiny free-swimming larvae, called veligers. It is during this stage that they are most readily transported from one waterbody to another (attached to boating gear, in bilgewater, bait buckets, etc.) and also most difficult to detect. After two or three weeks, the veligers "settle out" in the waterbody, attaching by way of strong, threadlike filaments to just about any hard surface they encounter. Rocks, sediment, wood, intake pipes, moorings, boat hulls, native mussel beds, are all at risk of colonization. Zebra mussels are small (adults are about 15 mm long) but they are voracious filter feeders, straining out major portions of the phytoplankton population and effectively starving out many native zooplankton species. The gap created in the food web may cascade through the entire ecosystem. Source: Maine Field Guide to Invasive Aquatic Plants
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