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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.
Wait. They're all clones, right ? I bet a single virus could wipe them all.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
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
*Good* gumbo is a colloidal suspension...
Yes, but unless we manufacture one, it's impossible to predict when Nature will get around to the job.
Which makes these guys (err... gals) an unstable invasive species. They may roll in, take over, settle into a niche... and then die out due to disease, causing a second major disruption when they do.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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
But who would they blame for everything???
Russians.