2010 was the best year ever for Marmorkrebs research

Last year, I couldn’t help but being a little disappointed that there had not been more papers on Marmorkrebs published than the year before.

That is not a problem this year.

And this isn’t even including a massive review chapter on crayfish that came out at the very end of the year, or a paper that got published in the last ten days of 2010, but has an official 2011 publication date on it (Jimenez & Faulkes 2011).

2010 was not only a bumper year for Marmorkrebs research, but may also have marked a turning point, as Marmorkrebs research started to go more into the field than the lab. The story of Marmorkrebs broke into news media as an emerging invasive species and pest on two fronts.

We also got several critical questions answered: What species is Marmorkrebs most closely related to? (Procambarus fallax.) Can it survive in the wild in northern Europe? (Oh, yes.)

I was also intrigued to see a surge in the number of open access papers published this year. The first had been just last year, but this year saw about half the papers published in open access journals.

With data for the first decade of Marmorkrebs research to play with, I am cautious about seeing an increasing trend. In the spirit of science, I’m going to make some predictions. According to a linear regression of the data, we should see 14 papers on Marmorkrebs in 2015, and 20 papers in 2020.

Of course, the increase might be exponential rather than linear. Too early to say, but it might be a bit exciting if it was.

And there are papers already in the wings for 2011.