Playing in the mud unlocks new locations for mussels

Playing in the mud unlocks new locations for mussels

A Central Michigan University graduate student could upend some of our assumptions about an important freshwater mollusk after playing in the mud. Aaron Vlasak was updating a 40-year inventory of mussels in the Tittabawassee River watershed when he noticed something in the data. “There were crazy ups and downs,” said Vlasak, a Midland native working on his master’s in biology. Some spots had more species of mussels than in the 1980s, some had fe…