An official website of the United States government.

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

National Invasive Species Information Center
U.S. Department of Agriculture
  1. Home
  2. Aquatic Invasives
  3. Aquatic Invertebrates
  4. Spiny Water Flea

Spiny Water Flea

Scientific Name

Bythotrephes longimanus (Leydig, 1860) (ITIS)

Common Name

Spiny water flea

Synonym

Bythotrephes cederstroemi (Yan et al. 2011)

Native To

Eurasia (Yan et al. 2011)

Date of U.S. Introduction

First discovered in Lake Huron in 1984; established in all of the Great Lakes by 1987 (Cullis 1988)

Means of Introduction

Most likely introduced through ballast water (Yan et al. 2011)

Impact

Has caused a decline in the population of zooplankton as a result of predation (Vanderploeg et al. 2002); may also compete with some native species, such as perch and small crustaceans (Branstrator and Lehman 1996)

Spiny water flea

Spiny waterflea, adults

Credit

Photo by Gary Montz

Source
Invasive.org.

Find more images

Distribution / Maps / Survey Status

Videos

All Resources

View and Filter All Spiny Water Flea Resources

Selected Resources

The section below contains highly relevant resources for this species, organized by source.

Council or Task Force
Partnership
Federal Government
State and Local Government
Academic
Professional
Citations