Voracious Invasive Shrimp Lake Ontario's Newest Ecological Problem - Globe & Mail

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Associated Press — Another invasive species — a half-inch long ravenous shrimp from Eurasia — has been found in Lake Ontario, raising concerns among scientists that the tiny crustacean could mean dire consequences for the lake's food chain.

The discovery of bloody red mysid — whose scientific name is Hemimysis anomala — was made in a lake sample taken near Oswego last spring, said Chuck O'Neill, Jr., an invasive species specialist with New York Sea Grant and a member of New York State's Invasive Species Task Force, on Wednesday.

Its only other confirmed appearance in the Great Lakes region was last November in a channel of Muskegon Lake, which empties into Lake Michigan.

The red mysid is closely related to the possum shrimp that live in the Great Lakes. It is native to the Caspian Sea and Black Sea areas of Eurasia — the same region that sent zebra mussels, quagga mussels and gobies, other invasive species, to the Great Lakes. Like most non-native species in the Great Lakes, the red mysid is presumed to have arrived in the ballast of oceangoing ships.

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