Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Zebra mussel
Summary
The zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) is a small freshwater mussel. The species originates from the lakes of southern Russia and Ukraine, but has been accidentally introduced to numerous other areas and has become an invasive species in many countries worldwide. Since the 1980s, the species has invaded the Great Lakes, Hudson River, and Lake Travis.
The species was first described in 1769 by German zoologist Peter Simon Pallas in the Ural, Volga, and Dnieper Rivers. Zebra mussels get their name from a striped pattern commonly seen on their shells, though it is not universally present. They are usually about the size of a fingernail, but can grow to a maximum length around . Their shells are D-shaped, and attached to the substrate with strong byssal fibers, which come out of their umbo on the dorsal (hinged) side.
Zebra mussels and the closely related and ecologically similar quagga mussels are filter-feeding organisms; they remove particles from the water column. Zebra mussels process up to of water per day, per mussel. Some particles are consumed as food, and feces are deposited on the lake floor. Nonfood particles are combined with mucus and other matter and deposited on lake floors as pseudofeces. Since the zebra mussel has become established in Lake Erie, water clarity has increased from 6 inches to up to three feet in some areas. This increased water clarity allows sunlight to penetrate deeper, enabling growth of submerged macrophytes. These plants, when decaying, wash up on shorelines, fouling beaches and causing water-quality problems.
Lake floor food supplies are enriched by zebra mussels as they filter pollution out of the water. This biomass becomes available to bottom-feeding species and to the fish that feed on them. The catch of yellow perch increased 5-fold after the invasion of zebra mussels into Lake St. Clair.
Zebra mussels attach to most substrates, including sand, silt, and harder substrates, but usually juveniles prefer harder, rockier substrates on which to attach.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related lectures (2)
Dynamic Programming: How Many Ways to Make Change
Demonstrates dynamic programming to find the number of ways to make change using different coin denominations.
Related publications (10)
Related people (6)
Related concepts (16)
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central Asia, south of the fertile plains of Southern Russia in Eastern Europe, and north of the mountainous Iranian Plateau of West Asia. It covers a surface area of (excluding the highly saline lagoon of Garabogazköl to its east), an area approximately equal to that of Japan, with a volume of .
Lake Huron
Lake Huron (ˈhjʊərɒn,_-ən ) is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. Hydrologically, it comprises the easterly portion of Lake Michigan–Huron, having the same surface elevation as Lake Michigan, to which it is connected by the , Straits of Mackinac. It is shared on the north and east by the Canadian province of Ontario and on the south and west by the U.S. state of Michigan. The name of the lake is derived from early French explorers who named it for the Huron people inhabiting the region.
Yellow perch
The yellow perch (Perca flavescens), commonly referred to as perch, striped perch, American perch, American river perch or preacher is a freshwater perciform fish native to much of North America. The yellow perch was described in 1814 by Samuel Latham Mitchill from New York. It is closely related, and morphologically similar to the European perch (Perca fluviatilis); and is sometimes considered a subspecies of its European counterpart.