Minneapolis -- An undergraduate research assistant at the University of Minnesota's Department of Climatology recently stumbled across a colony of unusual organisms while conducting underwater fish counts in three glacial lakes near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. The animals were apparently living in sunken ice shanties.

The student, George Ferguson, believes the creatures may have migrated from the Atlantic up the St. Lawrence Seaway and into Lake Superior, and then spread into other lakes in the region when their larvae got trapped in the bilges of local anglers' walleye boats.

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