The tip of the iceberg

Marmorkrebs are no longer single, lonely individuals in Europe. They’ve put down roots, so to speak, and have established populations.

The first good evidence of this came a couple of weeks ago, when news reports emerged of a population of Marmorkrebs in Klepzig, Germany. Another newspaper article on the Klepzig Marmorkrebs population has now appeared, providing more perspective on the situation, notably from Gerhard Scholz.

About a day after learning this, I learned of a new scientific paper reporting on an different established population in Germany, this time in Lake Moosweiher, near Freiburg. A preprint of the paper, by Christoph Chucholl and Michael Pfeiffer, is now available online. The Google map of Marmorkrebs introductions has been updated again to reflect the Lake Moosweiher population.

Chucholl and Pfeiffer suggest that their population could be merely the tip of the iceberg. The Klepzig story makes it seem very likely that they are right.