Researchers Discover New Species of Giant Crayfish in Stream in Southern Tennessee
Posted on January 19, 2011
Two aquatic biologists have discovered a new species of giant crayfish in a Tennessee stream. The new species, Barbicambarus simmonsi is more than twice the size of a typical crayfish found in Shoal Creek, a stream which drains into the Tennessee River. Generations of aquatic biologists who frequented the area somehow missed discovering the species.
The researchers found two of the crayfish on the day they made the discovery. One of the crayfish was literally found under a rock. It was hiding under a large, flat boulder that took two people to lift.
The researchers say the "bearded" setae on the antennae, bright red highlights and aquamarine tail fins add to the distinctiveness of the new species. The closest genetic relative to the newly discovered crayfish can grow almost as big as a lobster.
"This isn't a crayfish that someone would have picked up and just said, 'Oh, it's another crayfish,' and put it back," said University of Illinois aquatic biologist Chris Taylor, the curator of crustaceans at the Illinois Natural History Survey and a co-discoverer of the new species with Eastern Kentucky University biological sciences professor Guenter Schuster. "If you were an aquatic biologist and you had seen this thing, because of the size and the setae on the antennae, you would have recognized it as something really, really different and you would have saved it."
You can read more about the crayfish here on Eureka Alert. The new species is also described in a paper in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. Reuters also has a report on the crayfish.
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