My name is Daniel Spooner; I received my undergraduate degree in Environmental Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. My honors thesis was on the Diversity, Abundance and Distribution of Native Freshwater Mussels in the Mississippi River of Eastern Ontario. Since my schooling at Carleton, I have adopted an interest in stream ecology. I am currently working on my Masters Degree at the Department of Zoology at the University of Oklahoma under the guidance of Dr. Caryn Vaughn. My research will be conducted in a three tiered approach to looking at freshwater mussels as a microhabitat for nonbivalve invertebrates.

My first task will be to collect freshwater mussels and document what organisms are living on the shells, also known as epizoic invertebrates. I will also dissect the mussel tissue to determine what organisms (i.e. symbiants, parasites) are living within the tissue. Larval trematodes have been documented to functionally castrate the gonads of mussels (Pekkarein 1988). Since freshwater mussels are relatively late at maturing and require a host fish to brood glochidia, parasitizing their reproductive systems may hinder recruitment of this already threatened group of animals.

Upon documenting the occurrence of organisms living on and within the mussels, I will design a series of experiments to determine the functional role of mussels as a microcommunity. Specifically, I will determine whether freshwater mussels simply act as a substrate for epizoic invertebrates or that there is some nutritive value to living on the shell. I will also examine the importance of abiotic factors on the structure of epizoic communities. These factors would include the density of the mussel bed, the available shell surface area for colonization, depth and current velocity.

The final task will be to determine what costs, or benefits may be associated with a mussel acting as a microcommunity for other organisms. Using glycogen analyses to determine stress levels, I will monitor the health of mussels associated with varying amounts of parasitism and epizoic fauna.

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world"

John Muir (1838-1914)