EUROPE’S crayfish are about to suffer an attack of the clones. A mysterious crayfish with the ability to clone itself has appeared in the German aquarium trade. If released into the wild, it could wipe out its more conventional cousins.
Small crustaceans such as water fleas can replicate without mating, a process called parthenogenesis. But the crayfish is the first higher crustacean, a group that includes crabs, lobsters and shrimps, that is known to do the same.
Gerhard Scholtz of the Humboldt University of Berlin says the crustaceans are being sold by aquarium traders as Marmokrebs, meaning “marble crayfish”. Although…
