07 November 2020

Lost in translation

"The Interpreter" movie poster
It’s been a busy few weeks here on the Marmorkrebs newswatch. 

 

Three new countries added to the list of known introductions: Belgium, Poland, and the island of Taiwan.

 

One country banning most crayfish, including marbled crayfish: Japan.

 

What is nagging me after these last few weeks is this question: how much am I missing?

 

The news about crayfish in Poland had been out for some time. I missed it because it wasn’t in English. I stumbled upon when I was updating the marbled crayfish Wikipedia page

 

The news about Marmorkrebs in Taiwan and new regulations in Japan could have easily slipped by me if they hadn’t been reported on English news websites.


I have strong suspicions that there are many more introduced populations out there that aren’t getting into the scientific literature, because marbled crayfish introductions have happened so much that they aren’t considered notable. And I’m not finding them, because they are not being reported in English.


I don’t think I can set up Google alerts for every language, and I'm not even sure what people would call Marmorkrebs in most languages. So I don’t know how to fix this yet.


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