Adult Dwarf Wedge Mussels are sexually dimorphic (having both female and male individuals) and males release sperm into the water during mid-summer or fall. Females collect the sperm while siphoning water for food, and the eggs are fertilized and held within the female until their release the following spring. At release, the eggs have developed into parasitic larvae (glochidia), which attach themselves to fish with a small hook-like appendage. After several weeks attached to the fish the glochidia detaches and drops to the river bottom, becoming a juvenile young mussel.