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Freshwater Mussels: Nature's Water Quality Engineers

Learning Experience 6

Big Ideas

The Freshwater Mussels research project in Philadelphia is an excellent example of how scientists work with nature in urban environments to improve water quality and restore our health and the health of our waterways.

Mussels are amazingly efficient and effective water filters–that is their role/niche in the ecosystem. Re-introducing them and creating favorable conditions for them to thrive (after creating unfavorable conditions for them historically) restores dynamic balance and diversity to the waterways in our ecosystem

Change is a constant

Life organizes towards life

Summary

Fresh Water Mussels are the subject of an extensive research project on aquatic restoration in the Delaware Watershed. Everybody living, working and growing up in our watershed should know about this important work

Engage

What is an Ecosystem?

An ecosystem can be defined as a community of organisms, interacting with each other and the abiotic components of their environment; systems develop, energy flows , matter and nutrients cycle. All living systems are nested inside other systems – for example, we can look at the ecosystem in a fallen log, or the ecosystem of a hardwood forest.

All species including us rely on one another for survival – we rely on each other for food, shelter, or reproduction. All species are interdependent on one another, not independent, within ecosystems.

Consider revisiting or reviewing  the activity in  Unit 1.4 Engage: A Human Community Web

Ecosystems: Forces of Change Activity

This activity is to help students understand ecosystems.  After the activity,  students will be asked to define an ecosystem with a focus on the interdependence of the organisms. This activity is from the Smithsonian Institution’s Forces of Change and adapted by Cornell University.

Explore and Explain 1

The website offers 8 videos depicting different animals and how they naturally engineer a solution to a problem. Divide up your students into 8 groups and assign each group one of the videos to watch and take notes (they are short and may need to watch them multiple times). (Be prepared for some oos and ahs !)

Nature’s Innovations: Animals as Engineers

Shape of Life: Animals as Engineers

Explore the importance of diversity in local water systems. Using Mighty Mussel website students explore the homepage interactive graphic then discuss the benefits of diversity.

The key point here is that all of the organisms living in a healthy ecosystem provide services to other organisms – making it sustainable. These services also provide benefits to us. In the case of the mussels, it is filtering water and giving us a real-time indication of the health of our waterway.

Explore and Explain 2

One of the major reasons for the historic decline of freshwater mussels is due to legacy pollution from industry in the last 150 years.

Industry generated pollutants like heavy metals from manufacturing that ended up in our waterways. The “legacy of pollution” from manufacturing is still present in the sediment in our waterways and does not disappear (because there is no such place as away!)
Another reason is over harvesting for products made from mussel shells like buttons (anthropocentric).

All human activity draws on natural resources and has both short and long-term consequences, positive as well as negative, for the health of people and the natural environment.

Explore and Explain 3

Mussels as nature’s engineers have developed creative strategies to keep their population healthy. Students will explore biomimicry and how they take advantage of that to reproduce.

Freshwater Mussels and BioMimicry

Finally, return to the Mighty Mussel website and provide students time to explore areas of interest.

Elaborate

To conclude this unit, help students to recall the community web that was part of LE 1. We conclude with an exploration of the services that nature provides to our ecosystem. It is critical that we keep each member of the natural community safe and healthy. Students can brainstorm about ways they can contribute to the restoration and protection of the natural environment.

Teacher Support

Essential Question:

How can we create a healthy, beautiful, and sustainable Philadelphia for everyone?

Guiding Questions:

What is an ecosystem?What are the services nature provides to us for free?What services do the mussels provide to us and our ecosystem?ElaborateWhat are the ways that freshwater mussels create habitat and why have they been called ecosystem engineers?What are our scientists in the Delaware River Watershed doing to re-introduce the mussels and restore the health of the waterways?What can we do to protect the mussels?

Students will be able to:

Define “ecosystem” and provide an example of the interdependent relationships within a community of organisms in a particular ecosystem

Articulate the importance of diversity to the health of living systems, and explain how changes in biodiversity can influence humans’ resources, ecosystem services that humans rely on

Describe how scientists are using fresh water mussels as bio indicators in the Delaware River Watershed

Engage

Ball of Yarn

Tape to attach pictures to clothing

Space for a large circle

Weaving the Web Activity (Adapted from Project LEAP: Learning about Ecology, Animals, and Plants, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853  USDA Ag in the Classroom) 

Weaving the Web Activity Cards (pdf)

Explore & Explain

Ask Nature — Introduction: Nature’s Innovations: Animals as Engineers

Shape of Life: Nature’s Innovations: Animals as Engineers Video Clips

Mussel Naming Story Activity (pdf)

Explore & Explain 

Concho (West Texas) Pearls  ROCK AND GEM: Natural Concho Pearls  https://www.rockngem.com/natural-concho-pearls/

Mollusks Buttons Mussels and Us: The Button Trade

Harvesting Mussels: Case Study in Illinois 

Freshwater Mussels: Hunted for Buttons, Stranded by Dams . Living on Earth about Button production in Mid-West US  (audio file and transcript)

The Secret and Endangered lives of Freshwater Mussels (audio file and transcript)

Explore & Explain 

Model-making material for a 3-D Habitat

Elaborate 

Video of Danielle Kreeger, Former Science Director, Partnership for the Delware Estuary

Impact (verb)
have a strong effect or influence on someone or something

Harvest (noun)
the process or period of gathering crops

Pesticide (noun)
a substance used for destroying organisms harmful to cultivated plants or to animals

Insecticide (noun)
a substance used for killing insects

Mill (verb)
grind or crush (something) in a mill

Carcinogen (noun)
a substance capable of causing cancer in living tissue

Toxic (adjective)
poisonous

Waste (noun)
material that is not wanted; the unusable remains or byproducts of something

Condition (noun)
the state of something with regard to its appearance, quality, or working order

Wage (noun)
a fixed regular payment, typically paid on a daily or weekly basis, made by an employer to an employee

Income (noun)
money received, especially on a regular basis, for work or through investments

Domestic (adjective)
existing or occurring inside a particular country; not foreign or international

Global (adjective)
relating to the whole world; worldwide

Garment (noun)
an item of clothing

Production (noun)
the action of making or manufacturing from components or raw materials

Consume (verb)
use up (a resource)

Polluter (noun)
a person or thing responsible for contaminating the environment with harmful or poisonous substances

Define “ecosystem” and provide an example of the interdependent relationships within a community of organisms in a particular ecosystem.

Write an ad (persuasive writing) to promote all the major ecological services that the fresh water mussels can provide to Philadelphians and describe how they will improve our daily lives.

Recall and explain (from prior knowledge) what a biological indicator is and offer examples of what bio indicators are used by aquatic scientists to measure the health of the waterways.

Describe how their mutually beneficial interactions, in contrast, may become so interdependent that each organism requires the other for survival. Although the species involved in these competitive, predatory, and mutually beneficial interactions vary across ecosystems, the patterns of interactions of organisms with their environments, both living and nonliving, are shared.

Summarize the significant role that many different species of mussels will play, if successfully reintroduced into our waterways, using all that you have learned in Explore and Explain.

Draw on the experience of the aquatic scientists in the Fresh Water Mussel Project to describe (orally or in writing)what they are doing with mussels to restore the waterways, and how their work exemplifies the iterative way scientists work.

PA STEELS Standards

Environmental Literacy and Sustainability

3.4.6-8.E Environmental Literacy Skills: Collect, analyze, and interpret environmental data to describe a local environment.

3.4.6-8.F Environmental Literacy Skills: Obtain and communicate information on how integrated pest management could improve indoor and outdoor environments.

Related Standards

NGSS

MS-LS1-4 From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes – Use argument based on empirical evidence and scientific reasoning to support an explanation for how characteristic animal behaviors and specialized plant structures affect the probability of successful reproduction of animals and plants respectively.

MS-LS2-1 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics – Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.

MS-LS2-2 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics – Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems.

MS-LS2-4 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics – Construct an argument supported by empirical evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations.

MS-ETS1-3 Engineering Design – Analyze data from tests to determine similarities and differences among several design solutions to identify the best characteristics of each that can be combined into a new solution to better meet the criteria for success.

MS-ETS1-4 Engineering Design – Develop a model to generate data for iterative testing and modification of a proposed object, tool, or process such that an optimal design can be achieved.

Education for Sustainability

EfS U1 Enduring Understandings – We can learn how to live well within the means of nature. This viewpoint inspires and motivates people to act.
EfS U6 Enduring Understandings – Diversity is required to support rich complex systems (like us), to build strength and to develop resilience in living systems. Biological diversity, cultural, gender, political and intergenerational diversity all serve this purpose.
EfS U11 Enduring Understandings – We must operate within the natural laws and principles rather than attempt to overcome them. It is non-negotiable.

Student Materials

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