Ron Dimock's Home Page

MUSSELS: guardians of your water quality!! Design by: W. Rebergen,Delta Consult,Kapelle, The Netherlands. On the right is a commercial water pollution monitor based on mussel gaping. (Delta Consult, Kapelle, NL)
 
 

The aquarium facility for housing adult and juvenile mussels in my laboratory:

Chambers housing juveniles in a down-welling system (left) and adult U.imbecillis releasing glochidia larvae (visible as mucous strands from exhalant siphons).

Glochidia larvae of the mussel Utterbackia imbecillis with the adductor muscle stained with a fluorochrome that binds to actin filaments. The valves are fully open. Larvae are about 280 microns in length (axis parallel to the hinge).
 

Larva at day-4 of metamorphosis (upper left), with adductor muscle gone. Juvenile (upper right) 7 days post-metamorphosis showing new anterior and posterior adductor muscles. The first 3 pairs of gills filaments are partially visible (especially to the right of the mid-central foot). Lower image is of a juvenile 10 days post-metamorphosis, showing brightly fluorescing adductor muscles, some pedal musculature (center) and the heart within the pericardial sinus (toward 4 o'clock, just right of center of image, near posterior adductor).

3-week old juvenile Pyganodon cataracta : anterior to the right, total length about 450 microns; subtriangular part of shell is original larval shell; brownish-green is silt and algae in stomach and digestive glands.

Juvenile P. cataracta : about 5 weeks old. Individual on right is about 700 microns. Note new shell growth flanking foot on animal at right.

10 week old P. cataracta approximately 3.5 mm long, showing well developed inhalant and exhalant siphons. Animal is in process of rejecting a mass of yellow latex beads that it has filtered out of suspension.

Same juvenile as above showing a plume of latex beads in the flow from the exhalant siphon.
 
 

The water mite U. formosa on the gill of its host mussel P. cataracta

Photo by Ginger Fisher -- Female U. formosa