14 April 2017

More Marmorkrebs in Japan

War is in the air. Even against marbled crayfish, with a headline from Japan urging “war” against the species.

A news article is reporting the second finding of Marmorkrebs in Japan, and, worryingly, it reports multiple individuals spread across two years, suggesting a population has been established. And it is on a completely different (and more southern) island than previously. Based on modelling work I helped co-author a few years ago (Faulkes et al. 2012), that region is high quality habitat for Marmorkrebs (see Figure 5 in particular).

The map of Marmorkrebs introductions has been updated, although I suspect the crayfish were not found anywhere near so close to the mouth of the river.

References

Faulkes Z, Feria TP, Muñoz J. 2012. Do Marmorkrebs, Procambarus fallax f. virginalis, threaten freshwater Japanese ecosystems? Aquatic Biosystems 8: 13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/2046-9063-8-13

External links

War urged to destroy alien cloning mystery crayfish

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