![]() They filter it, keeping the food and oxygen. Those who do grow up stay active behind those closed shells. Their shell is still soft, so they quickly dig into the lakebed to hide from predators - like this polychaete worm. When their transformation is complete and their tiny foot emerges, they drop to the bottom of the lake - all on their own for the first time. The glochidia grow into juveniles during their travels. These little hitchhikers tour the lake for one or two weeks, absorbing nutrients from their living ride. The luckiest glochidia clamp onto a fin or gill using hooks on the tips of their tiny shells. This three-spined stickleback is the perfect vehicle. Some drift freely while others get tangled up, forming sticky trains with their brothers and sisters. Roughly the size of a grain of sand, the glochidia look like translucent butterflies, but they’re really just teeny tiny mussels, fluttering through the open water.Įach one dangles an almost invisible thread that helps them float, and latch onto what’s around them. Mom launches them by the tens of thousands into the wide watery wilderness - along with some of her own waste. When it’s time for these young mussels to strike out on their own, they make their exit. Then they develop into mussel larvae, called glochidia. Within the safety of her rugged shell, the eggs move from the gonads into the gills. This mussel mom is filled with eggs, fertilized by a nearby male. When they need to find food or deeper, cooler waters, they can move a few meters in a matter of hours. They use what looks like a wide, gooey tongue, but it’s actually called a foot. Unlike their saltwater cousins that clamp on to rocks, they drag themselves across river beds and sandy lake bottoms. Behold: the California Floater mussel, a freshwater bivalve with the soul of a nomad.
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