Ohio lists Marmorkrebs as “Injurious aquatic invasive species”

Ohio is the latest North American jurisdiction to regulate Marmorkrebs.

 

In a PDF dated 9 April 2021 in the file name, Marmorkrebs is designated an Injurious Aquatic Invasive Species (IAIS). The one page pamphlet notes:

 

Listed species are unlawful to possess, import, or sell unless dead and/or preserved.

However, the Department of Natural Resources list of injurious aquatic invasive species is on a page that says “Published on Jul 31, 2020” in the search results. So it’s possible that Marmorkrebs were already listed last year and the new document is just the start of publicizing the new regulation. Another PDF from Spring 2019 indicates that Ohio was planning to add marbled crayfish to the list. But it hadn’t happened yet.

It’s symptomatic of a recurring problem. I, as someone who actually cares about when new regulations about this species are passed, cannot find out when these things happen. What chance does a normal pet owner with a 10 gallon aquarium have?

External links

 

Marbled Crayfish (Marmorkrebs) Control in Ohio (PDF)

Injurious Aquatic Invasive Species

 

New website: The Perfect Invader

The Perfect Invader is a new project to examine how the introduction of Marmorkrebs in Madagascar is affecting human health. 

 

Part of the project is looking at how people are eating Marmorkrebs. Some of that has already been published (e.g., here and here).

 

A newer aspect of the project, which I’ve seen in relation to other crayfish, but not Marmorkrebs, is how the crayfish affect schistosomiasis infections.

 

Check it out!

 

External links

 

The Perfect Invader

 

Okada and colleagues 2021

Okada S, Hirano N, Abe T, Nagayama T. 2021. Aversive operant conditioning alters the phototactic orientation of the marbled crayfish. The Journal of Experimental Biology 224(6): jeb242180. https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.242180

 

Abstract 

 

Aversive learning was applied to affect the phototactic behaviour of the marbled crayfish. Animals initially showed negative phototaxis to white light and positive taxis to blue light. Using an aversive learning paradigm, we investigated the plasticity of innate behaviour following operant conditioning. The initial rate of choosing a blue-lit exit was analysed by a dual choice experiment between blue-lit and white-lit exits in pre-test conditions. During training, electrical shocks were applied to the animals when they oriented to the blue-lit exit. Memory tests were given to analyse the orientation rate to the blue-lit exit in trials 1 h and 24 h after training and these rates were compared with the pre-test. In general, animals avoided the blue-lit exit in the memory tests. When training was done three times, the long-term memory was retained for at least 48 h, although a single bout of training was also enough to form a long-term memory. Cooling animals at 4 °C or injection of cycloheximide immediately after training altered the formation of long-term memory, but had no effect on short-term memory formation. Administration of the adenylate cyclase inhibitor SQ22536, the PKA inhibitor H89, or the CREB inhibitor KG-501 immediately after training also blocked the formation of long-term memory, but had no effect on short-term memory formation. Thus, our pharmacological behavioural analyses showed that new protein synthesis was necessary to form long-term memories and that the cAMP/PKA/CREB pathway is the main signal cascade for long-term memory formation in the marbled crayfish.

 

Keywords: None provided.

Heroes release zeroes

The Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant has started a new campaign against invasive species. The aquatic species arm of the campaign is Release Zero.

 

I particularly appreciate the point that it’s hard to be a responsible pet owner when so many providers don’t know or provide scientific names. There are hundreds of species of crayfish with different invasive potential, so just selling “crayfish” is irresponsible. There is a great need for quick, high quality ways of identifying species in the pet trade.

 

Marmorkrebs are not featured on the main webpage, but are species of concern for the Great Lakes, as the project’s Twitter account points out.

 

Wild marbled crayfish populations are established across Europe and elsewhere. They have NOT been found in the Great Lakes! 🙌 Aquarium owners, anglers and others can help keep it that way.

We need way more education on this, so I hope this campaign is very successful!

External links

 

Release Zero website

Marmorkrebs talk online, 26 February 2021

Wolfgang Stein announced a seminar about Marmorkrebs will be held on Zoom!

Saisupritha Talasu is presenting “Identifying various biogenic amine receptors in Procambarus virginalis” at 12:00 pm (noon) Central time on Friday, 26 February 2021. The Zoom meeting ID is 630 494 073.

It will be followed by a talk on escape responses, species unknown.

Invasive Species Week is coming...

 Mark your calendars for 24 May, 2021. That will be the start of Invasive Species Week.

This blog will be participating, naturally!

External links

 

Invasive Species Week

Wen 2020

Wen Y. 2020. Characterization of MITF gene in crayfish and their possible role in innate immunity. Master’s thesis, Department of Animal Breeding and Genetics, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences). http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-s-16418

Abstract

Microphthalmia-associated transcription factor (MITF) is a tissue-specific transcription factor (TF), with a basic helix-loop-helix leucine zipper (bHLH-LZ) domain, which binds to the canonical E-box sequence (5’-CANNTG-3’) in the promoter region of target genes. In this study, the MITF-like protein was identified in the marbled crayfish (Procambarus virginalis). The full-length cDNA coding sequence of the most similar gene to MITF from marbled crayfish is 1284bp (427 amino acids). In the secondary and tertiary structure of the deduced amino acid sequence, a conserved functional structure of bHLH-LZ was shown, which could bind to E-box. In the phylogenetic analysis, this obtained MITF-like gene showed a lager evolutionary distance to all the vertebrates and some invertebrates like lancelet (Branchiostoma belcheri), starfish (Acanthaster planci), sea urchin (Paracentrotus lividus) and (Lytechinus variegatus), but is closer than worms (Caenorhabditis elegans). The bHLH-LZ domain is located in exon 6, exon 7, exon 8, and exon 9 in the MITF gene and has a similar structure as the corresponding exons in human. Besides, in this study, a comparison of exon-intron structure of MITF between human, mouse, fruit fly and marbled crayfish was performed, it was shown that the splicing sites of the bHLH-LZ domain in MITF gene might be conserved across species. To evaluate the possible role of MITF as a TF in innate immune system regulation, a similar prophenoloxidase (proPO) DNA sequence was analysed for the presence of E-box. The proPO gene is responsible for trapping and myelinization of pathogens in invertebrate. The proPO-like gene of marbled crayfish contains eight CANNTG sequences. In addition, anti-apoptotic factor (BCL-2)-like gene was found in marbled crayfish and four CANNTG sequences were found. Our results provided evidence of the presence of MITF-like gene in crayfish species and may provide knowledge on the role of MITF in innate immune activation.

Keywords: Microphthalmia-associated transcription factor • basic Helix-Loop-Helix Leucine Zipper • crayfish • Aphanomyces astaci • immunity