East European crayfish stocks at risk: arrival of non-indigenous crayfish species

Abstract

-An increasing number of non-indigenous crayfish species (NICS) of apparently pet trade origin have become established particularly in Europe. Especially alarming are recent confirmation of two distantly separated marbled crayfish Procambarus fallax f. virginalis populations in Ukraine and indications of more North American cambarids present in the local pet market. The present study aimed to investigate crayfish species availability within the Ukrainian pet trade together with the climate match and risk they represent to the freshwater ecosystems generally and indigenous crayfish species in particular. Altogether, 15 NICS belonging to all three crayfish families were detected. Considering their origin, availability, probability of establishment, invasiveness and further aspects, marbled crayfish and red swamp crayfish Procambarus clarkii appear to be potentially the most troubling. Available information obtained from the pet trade in ornamental crayfish as a whole demonstrates that the broad availability of NICS most probably overlaps the vast majority of European indigenous crayfish species distribution, including the endemic thick-clawed crayfish Astacus pachypus, which occupies only a limited area that is situated critically close to established marbled crayfish populations. Negative effects of NICS on freshwater ecosystems as a whole can be also expected.

Risk assessment of pet-traded decapod crustaceans in the Republic of Kazakhstan, the leading country in Central Asia

“…Although pet trade has been considered one of the most important sources of non-native species (Padilla and Williams, 2004;Duggan, 2010), risk assessment of decapod crustaceans introduced via this pathway had been marginalized for a long time. The situation began to change in recent years (see Soes and Koese, 2010;Chucholl, 2013;Faulkes, 2014;Papavlasopoulou et al, 2014;Patoka et al, 2014a;Mazza et al, 2015;Kotovska et al, 2016). Since mitigation and eradication are difficult and mostly impossible when non-native species become established (Aquiloni et al, 2009), the importance of prevention is obvious (Souty-Grosset et al, 2016).…”

“…Despite the unexceptional illegality of this act, it is also true for freshwater decapod crustaceans (Peay, 2009;Patoka et al, 2014b;Novitsky and Son, 2016). Leading markets with ornamental freshwater decapod crustaceans globally are the Czech Republic (Patoka et al, 2015), Germany (Chucholl, 2013;Chucholl and Wendler, 2016) and the USA (Faulkes, 2015b), followed by several other countries such Brazil (Magalhães et al, 2005), Greece (Papavlasopoulou et al, 2014), Russia (Vodovsky et al, 2017), Slovakia (Lipták and Vitázková, 2015), Turkey (Turkmen and Karadal, 2012) and Ukraine (Kotovska et al, 2016).…”

The Influence of Heavy Metal Ions on the Viability and Metabolic Enzyme Activity of the Marbled Crayfish <i>Procambarus virginalis</i> (Lyko, 2017)

“…Due to the fact that marbled crayfish has entered waters of Dnipropetrovsk [7], the necessity to study the possibility of its adaptation to environmental conditions of water bodies with an aim to predict its spread, or even acclimatization under conditions of toxicological water pollution of steppe Prydniprovya [1,3,8,9].…”

Salinity tolerance of marbled crayfishProcambarus fallaxf.virginalis

“…Discovery of two distant marbled crayfish Procambarus fallax f. virginalis populations in Dnipropetrovsk and Odessa, Ukraine in 2015 drastically changed this view (Novitsky and Son, 2016). Pet trade surveys provide extended lists of NICS, often of North American origin, both in the Ukraine (Kotovska et al, 2016) and Lower Volga region of the Russian Federation (Vodovsky et al, 2017). This has raised concerns of NICS potential to negatively impact the unique ecosystems of Azov, Black and Caspian Seas as well as their tributaries that are inhabited by ICS.…”