Self-cloning mutant crayfish from America are taking over Europe's lakes, rivers, and streams and have now even reached Africa.
The six-inch-long marbled crayfish is a species that did not exist just 25 years ago. It appears to be a mutation of the Slough Crayfish, Procambarus fallax, which lives only in the tributaries of the Satilla River in Florida and Georgia.
Scooped up for the aquarium trade, a mutation seems to have occurred about 25 years ago enabling the crayfish to produce asexually.
All marbled crayfish are female.
The Marbled Crayfish has now been declared a species in its own right -- Procambarus virginalis. Slough Crayfish and Marbled Crayfish can produce no young together; this is a true species separation, albeit, where one is self-fertilizing clone.
Is it tasty? Is it displacing native species?
ReplyDeleteI must admit, Jennifer, I immediately wondered the same thing. Mostly about its edibility. (If so, could it help with that other issue...?)
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