Zebra mussels to the rescue
By Janet Raloff
Oh, those clever Dutch engineers. They’ve turned zebra mussels into local environmental heroes.
In the United States, immigrant zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) have been setting up ultradense colonies that rob food from native aquatic ecosystems and even clog intake pipes to water-treatment and industrial plants. However, it’s their propensity for crowding that makes these reviled bivalves so attractive for water-purification systems, says Mathijs G.D. Smit of TNO, an applied research institute in Den Helder, the Netherlands.