IDENTIFICATION OF THE GREAT-LAKES QUAGGA MUSSEL AS DREISSENA-BUGENSISFROM THE DNIEPER RIVER, UKRAINE, ON THE BASIS OF ALLOZYME VARIATION

The discovery of a second dreissenid species, the quagga mussel, in th e Great Lakes in 1991 prompted a search for its identity. We have iden tified the North American quagga mussel as Dreissena bugensis Andrusov on the basis of allozyme data and morphological characters. Further, a phenotypically distinct form of the quagga mussel found in Lakes Eri e and Ontario also matches the electrophoretic profiles of the typical Lake Ontario quagga and European D. bugensis. We confirm that the whi te ''profunda'' mussel found in the deep waters of Lake Erie is a phen otype of the quagga mussel, and we conclude that the quagga mussel is D. bugensis which has been introduced from the Black Sea drainage of U kraine.