: ''For the Asian green mussel, see
Perna viridis
''Perna viridis'', known as the Asian green mussel, is an economically important mussel, a bivalve belonging to the family Mytilidae. It is harvested for food but is also known to harbor toxins and cause damage to submerged structures such as d ...
.''
''Arcuatula senhousia'', commonly known as the Asian date mussel, Asian mussel or bag mussel, is a small saltwater
mussel, a
marine bivalve mollusk
Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is e ...
species in the family
Mytilidae
Mytilidae are a family of small to large marine and brackish-water bivalve molluscs in the order Mytilida. One of the genera, '' Limnoperna'', even inhabits freshwater environments. The order has only this one family which contains some 52 gener ...
, the mussels. Other
common names for this species include: the Japanese mussel, Senhouse's mussel, the green mussel (a name also applied to ''
Perna viridis
''Perna viridis'', known as the Asian green mussel, is an economically important mussel, a bivalve belonging to the family Mytilidae. It is harvested for food but is also known to harbor toxins and cause damage to submerged structures such as d ...
''), and the green bagmussel. It is harvested for human consumption in China.
This mussel is native to the Pacific Ocean from Siberia to Singapore, but it has also been accidentally introduced and become an
invasive species in numerous other areas worldwide. It can live in the
intertidal
The intertidal zone, also known as the foreshore, is the area above water level at low tide and underwater at high tide (in other words, the area within the tidal range). This area can include several types of habitats with various species ...
or shallow
subtidal zones. In California the species has been recorded in densities of up to 150,000 individuals per square meter. It grows quickly and lives only about 2 years. It prefers soft substrates and surrounds its shell in a dense mass of
byssus
A byssus () is a bundle of filaments secreted by many species of bivalve mollusc that function to attach the mollusc to a solid surface. Species from several families of clams have a byssus, including pen shells ( Pinnidae), true mussels (Mytil ...
.
One of several negative impacts of this invasive species is that it has a detrimental effect on
eelgrass Eelgrass is a common name for several plants and may refer to:
* ''Zostera'', marine eelgrass
* ''Vallisneria'', freshwater eelgrass
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