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The Mutant All-Female Crayfish, Which Reproduces by Cloning Itself, Is Filling Europe at Alarming Speed (atlasobscura.com)
The marbled crayfish looks much like any other freshwater crustacean. It has two claws, ten legs, and an attractive blue-brown marbled shell. Yet this six-inch creature, found in streams and lakes around the world, is far more sinister than you might expect. From a report: Its new scientific name gives a few clues: Procambarus virginalis. Every marbled crayfish, known as a marmorkreb in German, is female -- and they reproduce by cloning themselves. Frank Lyko, a biologist at the German Cancer Research Center, first heard about the marbled crayfish from a hobbyist aquarium owner, who picked up some "Texas crayfish" at a pet shop in 1995. They were strikingly large, and they laid enormous batches of eggs -- hundreds, in a single go. Soon, the New York Times reports, the hobbyist was beset with so many crayfish he was giving them away to his friends. And soon after that, marmorkrebs were showing up in pet stores upon Europe.
There was something very strange about these crayfish. They were all female, and they all laid hundreds of eggs without mating. These eggs, in turn, hatched into hundreds more females -- with each one growing up fully able to reproduce by herself. In 2003, scientists sequenced their DNA and confirmed what many owners already believed to be the case: Each baby crayfish was a clone of its mother, and they were filling Europe's fishtanks at alarming speed. Just 25 years ago, the marbled crayfish did not exist at all. Now, they can be found in the wild by the millions in Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, the Ukraine, Japan, and Madagascar.
There was something very strange about these crayfish. They were all female, and they all laid hundreds of eggs without mating. These eggs, in turn, hatched into hundreds more females -- with each one growing up fully able to reproduce by herself. In 2003, scientists sequenced their DNA and confirmed what many owners already believed to be the case: Each baby crayfish was a clone of its mother, and they were filling Europe's fishtanks at alarming speed. Just 25 years ago, the marbled crayfish did not exist at all. Now, they can be found in the wild by the millions in Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, the Ukraine, Japan, and Madagascar.
uh, uh, finds a way...
Grab a really big pot, and some seasoning, I'm hungry.
Just head on down to Louisiana and pick up a batch of Cajuns from the bayou and they will have those crayfish under control in no time. Don't bother bringing in snakes or gators to control the Cajuns though, they'll eat those too.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
There's a quick, easy solution to this.
How do they taste?
It's the first sign of the matriarchal utopia...
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
a feminist's wet dream, a world without male privilege where everyone is equal (because everyone is female and identical clones)
https://www.nature.com/article... Nobody knows. Best hypothesis is that it was a lucky mutation.
It will be interesting to see what happens. Sexual reproduction is critical for spreading favorable genes like resistance to predators, poisons, etc. Since these are all clones they aren't going to have those advantages and sooner or later will encounter some factor that wipes them out. Apple farmers face a similar problem since each variety is a single genetic variant that is grafted onto other trees.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Cajun Navy deployed. Have Hot Sauce will Travel.
Wasn't there supposed to be some sort of replicative fading where the telomeres or some such got shorter over time until the clones were not viable?
Yes : *body* cell lines have such kind of control to avoid cells replicating too much.
But eggs are formed from *germ* cell lines, which are (by Nature's "design" - as its supposed to be the way a specie reproduce) not having any replication limit.
These are not "dolly the sheep"-style clones (a body cell used to form a new clone by transfering the nucleus, and might inherit some of the replication limits of the body cell).
These are parthenogenesis-style (see christian mythology about virgin mary) clones : some how, an non-fertilized egg-cell managed to grow into a full grown individual (usually, in other species, there's some kind of bug in the "meiosis" - the process is supposed to split the normally "diploid" genome into half "haploid". The wikipedia mentions that they are "triploid" - so having triplets instead of chromosome pairs - so it's quite a big bug in the meiosis procedure).
But it is an egg cell (although a chromosomaly abnormal one) that produces the whole individual, so no telomeres problems nor any other cell division limitations.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Europe is being overrun by all-female blue mutants?
Do they look like Jennifer Lawrence?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
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It's kind of freaky that it's population is growing so quickly and exponentially.
Actually no surprise.
These are not animal that care for their offsprings.
So they tend to lay a ton of eggs in hopes that a few of them manage to survive into reproductive adulthood.
The surprise isn't the massive amount of egg. (that would be a surprise for mammals like humans. that's the normal modus operandi for crayfish)
The surprise is that without any fertilization happening, the eggs are able to hatch and grow into an adult egg-laying female.
(Wikipedia mentions the animal having some chromosomic aberration and being triploid - thus the meiosis going wrong when trying to produce egg cells)
I wonder what kinds of havoc it is wrecking on local ecosystems.
Well, given that its current ecosystem is "aquariums" : its mostly pissing off their respective owner who simply don't know what to do with all the newly hatching crayfishes.
If let out freely in the nature :
- it should have predators in the nature. Not all eggs will hatch and grow to a reproductive adult. There's a reason why the reproductive strategy of all similar animals is "lay as many eggs as possible in the hope that some survive".
The population is currently explosing only because it's happening in the sheltered environment of aquarium, with humans taking care of their pets, and not much predation.
- if too many offsprings do hatch, they'll have to eat : they'll be in competion with all other animal in the environment, and they'll be in competition with all the other offsprings.
So mostly they'll probably stave very quickly, either by being outcompeted by other animal and/or by depleting the resources in their immediate environment.
So the damage to the environment depends on how fast they'll die.
Was this thing man made?
Technically, given that it currently survives because it's living in aquariums : yes, we human have contributed a bit to it.
But no, it definitely doesn't look like something coming out of some lab.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Apparently they're tasty. From the article in Nature:
"Julia Jones, a conservation scientist at Bangor University, UK, who first identified4 marbled crayfish in Madagascar in 20074, says that the species’ spread is due largely to their popularity as a food source. In 2009, she met a man on a bus carrying a plastic bag full of them that he planned to dump into his rice fields in the hope of creating a sustainable stock, she says.
"Stopping their spread in Madagascar will be “almost impossible”, says Lyko. Collaborators there have begun campaigns urging people not to transport them or release them into rice fields. The message is a hard sell in a country where poverty levels are high and marbled crayfish are a cheap and popular source of protein. Lyko’s colleague brought a few dozen that she had caught to a family barbecue. “This went down quite well,” he says."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It's important to note that you shouldn't get your physics/medical/biological/legal advice from Star Trek.
Cloning is the most ancient form of reproduction. It's so simple and easy to implement. Sexual reproduction is much more complex, but took over for complex species because it allows individuals of a species to all differ slightly in every characteristic. When facing environmental stresses, these small differences show up as lesser or greater reproductive advantage. In a sexual species, any reproductive advantage means swift adaptation of the species to new environmental conditions.
These asexual crayfish (Procambarus sheldoni?) may be reproducing fast now, but like the Cavendish banana, they will be apt to succumb to some disease that a sexual species could adapt away from.