Monitoring fitness of caged mussels (Elliptio complanata) to assess and prioritize streams for restoration

This is an author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and can be found at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%291099-0755.1. Freshwater mussels (Order: Unionidae) are among the most imperiled aquatic organisms in North America. Conservationists and resource managers within the United States are increasingly advocating restoration of these animals to preserve biodiversity and boost ecosystem services in the nation’s waterways.\ud 2. Historically, restoration methods have yielded less than optimal survival rates due in part to an inability to identify suitable habitat for these organisms. Through the use of caged mussels as bioindicators, a method was developed to test prospective restoration sites for their ability to support mussel fitness prior to beginning actual restoration so that investments are strategic.\ud 3. Mussels (Elliptio complanata) from a healthy population were caged and deployed to candidate streams. Their survivorship, condition, and proximate biochemical composition (protein, carbohydrate, lipid) was then monitored for one year. Streams that supported mussel fitness as well as or better than their source stream were considered to be suitable for restoration.\ud 4. Four of five candidate streams were found to support mussel fitness. Additionally, reciprocal transfers between two source populations revealed that the seasonal patterns of tissue biochemical composition respond to ambient stream conditions, indicating that this species is diagnostic as a bioindicator of stream quality and habitat suitability