APRIL 2017 • NEBRASKAland 47
matched with funds from the Nebraska Wildlife
Conservation Fund and a Nebraska Environmental
Trust grant to construct a building at the North
Platte Hatchery to raise at-risk species.
"Fish culture and propagation has been
around in Nebraska for the last 150 years," said
Rosenthal. "Mussel culture is relatively new and
it is very exciting to be in on the cutting edge
of some of the methods that are being used to
culture mussels for restoration projects across the
country. We have been assisting malacologists
[those who study mussels] from other states by
providing unique host fish, and as a result we
have established working relationships, which
has helped to provide avenues of information
exchanged in culture techniques."
Graduate students in the School of Natural
Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
will be conducting surveys that will help measure
the success of the work, including locating,
monitoring and recording how mussels are
adapting, growing and, hopefully, thriving and
reproducing.
No one really knows what the future has in
store for many mussel species in Nebraska and
across the U.S., but by combining century-old fish
culturing techniques with new mussel rearing
capabilities, biologists are striving to increase
mussel populations, while
working with other states
and local organizations to
keep an important part of
our natural fauna where
it belongs: in our streams
and rivers.
As Sweet put it,
"Mussels are the heart of
our native landscape. For
those concerned enough
with Nebraska's fauna,
mussels should be a part of the landscape now
and for years to come. After all, we are primarily
to blame for their demise." ■
The author would like to thank Bryan Sweet,
Ted Bartels, Dean Rosenthal, Steve Schainost,
and Keith Koupal for their contributions to this
article. Thanks to Joe Cassidy and Josh Cloeter,
Commission biologists, who worked on the
propagation project and Dr. Mark Pegg at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln along with
graduate student Lindsay Ohlman who will be
doing studies on released mussels. Thanks also
to Kristal Stoner with the Commission for her
work on the grant funding to make this project
possible.
A glochidia's see-through
shell shows inner body
parts and an extended
foot.
Aland 47
After collecting glochidia from a female mussel, fisheries biologists Dean Rosenthal, Bryan Sweet, Josh Cloeter and
Ted Bartels (left to right) count them and check their viability under a microscope.