Zebra Mussels and Natural Selection

Just a note: It seems a contractor has successfully eradicated invasive zebra mussels from a quarry in Virginia using massive doses of potasium chloride---toxic to mussels (not so good for death row inmates, either). After the evident die-off, live mussels were sent down in a sack to serve as aquatic canaries, and they promptly died too. Divers went down to confirm, gave the all-clear.

Killing all the unwanted organisms in an isolated environment is one thing. But something about this next bit rings a bell. I wonder what happens to a pregnant mussel that doesn't happen to be so sensitive to KCl?

There has been at least one other attempt to eliminate zebra mussels from a body of water. In 1999, researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute began manually pulling the unwelcome mollusks from Lake George in New York. Since then, the population has declined dramatically, but has not been completely eradicated, said Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer, a professor at Rensselaer who directs the zebra mussel removal efforts.

"You're not going to necessarily get every single last one," she said. "But our goal was initially to go in and to remove the bulk of them. And we did that."