Even though mature zebra mussels can live in it, the larvae quickly die, according to laboratory tests completed last month at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy. As word of the research spread through lakeside communities, there was a collective sigh of relief. We have enough threats to the quality of the lake without some new nuisance coming along. Optimism should be tempered, though, said Dr. Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer , the director of Rennselaer's Darrin Fresh Water Institute, where the studies were done. It is unlikely that the finding will lead to a treatment that can stop the mussels in other waters, she said, and there is always the possibility that the mussels will eventually adjust to the lake's seemingly hostile conditions and begin proliferating.
Nature seems to find a way.
For roughly 200 years, zebra mussels have been easily finding their way across two continents, spreading first across Europe as newly dug canals linked their home range in the Caspian and Black Seas with surrounding waterways. And almost every time they have colonized a new area, they have become a nuisance. In the mid-1800's, after arriving in France, clusters began blocking water pipes in Paris. After appearing in the Great Lakes in 1988, they hitchhiked on barges down the Mississippi River and spread to hundreds of lakes, carried as invisible larvae in bait buckets or the bilges of speedboats from one fishing spot to another. Efforts to clear the mussels from the pipes of power plants and other structures have cost tens of millions of dollors, Federal biologists say.