Is having a few hundred clams under your lake dock a good thing or a bad thing?
A reader recently asked that question of Cottage Life magazine. To get an answer, reporters got in touch with Timothy Pearce, the assistant curator and head of the Section of Mollusks at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
“The sudden appearance of large numbers of organisms can sometimes result from the introduction of a non-native species,” Timothy said. “They’re often free from the predators and diseases that kept their numbers in check elsewhere, so they can proliferate into large populations.”
According to the article, seeing fresh water clams in a fresh water lake is not unusual.
“It’s like having dandelions,” Timothy said. “It always appears as though they’re aggregating. But that’s just because they’re in your yard.”
