{"id":4503,"date":"2022-10-25T09:45:43","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T12:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biobureau.com.br\/golden-mussel-project-breaking-paradigms\/"},"modified":"2022-10-25T09:45:43","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T12:45:43","slug":"golden-mussel-project-breaking-paradigms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biobureau.com.br\/en\/golden-mussel-project-breaking-paradigms\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden Mussel Project: Breaking Paradigms"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I recently went to the Jupi\u00e1 and Ilha Solteira reservoirs, on the Paran\u00e1 River in Mato Grosso do Sul, to visit the Jupi\u00e1 hydroelectric plant and Aguaruga aquaculture. <\/span><\/p>\n

Hydroelectric dams and aquaculture are the two main sectors with direct economic damage caused by the golden mussel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking at the map, the aquaculture is located in a small cove of a small arm of the Ilha Solteira reservoir, which is more than 1000 km\u00b2 in area. But there, when we looked around, the sensation was of immensity. The distances and the amount of water were enormous!<\/p>\n

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Google Maps<\/span><\/p>\n

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Paran\u00e1 River, Mato Grosso do Sul (Mauro Rebelo, 2022)<\/span><\/p>\n

This got me thinking about the challenge of golden mussel control.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our goal is not just to control mussels inside power plants and on the hulls of ships, which would already be a huge challenge, but to control the species in the environment. And that environment is huge.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inside the laboratory, working with invisible gene editing in tiny volumes, we can lose sight of the colossal volume of hydroelectric reservoirs in Brazil.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the mussel is there… in every liter of water.<\/span><\/p>\n

How can we aim to treat every liter of water in every Brazilian reservoir? It’s very daring, to say the least. Is that crazy?<\/p>\n

Adult mussels are not omnipresent<\/b><\/h3>\n

Although mussels are potentially in every liter of water, they are not everywhere. In fact, if you walk along the banks of the reservoir on the aquaculture beach, you won’t see any mussels. They don’t stick to river rocks, tree trunks or boat hulls, but they fill every square inch of the net tanks.<\/span><\/p>\n

This suggests to me that, although mussels can attach themselves anywhere, they prefer artificial substrates*.<\/span><\/p>\n

Could I test this hypothesis? In fact, it was already being tested by our research project.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Hubz team, co-executor of the golden mussel biological control project, led by Raquel Figueira, had measured mussels along three reservoirs with quadrants, sonar and imaging, developing an automatic and scalable measurement method. They rightly observed that the distribution of mussels was neither uniform nor random, but aggregated.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is not uncommon for an organism to have an aggregate distribution as a result of some biological or environmental factor.<\/span><\/p>\n

What Raquel’s team discovered was that the factor that seemed to aggregate the mussels was artificial substrates: dams, canals, abandoned buildings, shipwrecks and aquaculture farms.<\/span><\/p>\n

One such place is the Pereira Barreto canal, in the state of S\u00e3o Paulo. It is considered the largest artificial canal in South America and the fifth largest in the world. It connects the Ilha Solteira reservoir to the Tr\u00eas Irm\u00e3os reservoir with the aim of regulating the volume of the two reservoirs to maximize energy production. <\/span><\/p>\n

The canal also has a large volume of boats, as it serves as an outlet for a large part of Mato Grosso’s soy production towards the port of Santos and is a major nursery for mussels.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Google Maps<\/span><\/p>\n

The impact of this nursery is not negligible. After 5 months of reversing the flow of water from Tr\u00eas Irm\u00e3os to Ilha Solteira (usually the opposite), the mussel infestation in the Tr\u00eas Irm\u00e3os reservoir decreased. The Pereira Barreto canal has become a major exporter of larvae.<\/span><\/p>\n

The evidence, although anecdotal for the time being, is reinforced by mathematical models and references in the literature. Our next step is a controlled study.<\/span><\/p>\n

You can’t imagine that aquaculture is any different. With a protected area, artificial substrate and two meals a day, they are a perfect environment for mussels to settle and disperse.<\/span><\/p>\n

This finding was a little uncomfortable because it turned one of the mussel’s traditional victims, aquaculture farms, into perpetrators.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the observations and data were robust: there aren’t mussels on every surface, and even less where we don’t have aquaculture.<\/span><\/p>\n

Breaking down paradigms<\/b><\/h2>\n

We don’t find mussels on every possible surface, but we do find mussels on some more than others. This finding overturned an important paradigm of infestation: that mussels stick to any surface.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I decided to revisit other premises<\/span><\/p>\n

The first is that the mussel has no natural competitors. This is because, during the mussel counts, Raquel’s team took several photos of sponges covering mussels and suffocating them. We’ve already reported how sponges also attack installed banks of sun coral, another marine invasive species. I got the impression that, if you look around, you’ll find more and more examples of competitors.<\/span><\/p>\n