The only thing better than a crawfish dinner is...

[WoundedKnee]

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/ac1da8eb-3a40-4962-ad41-ff841c3cfadd

It sounds like a bad monster movie plot: A 10-legged mutant creature that reproduces asexually, escapes from confinement in Germany, and quietly begins a global invasion. Within 2 decades, clones of the voracious animal spread through Europe and Africa, bringing devastation to ecosystems and threatening native species.

That appears to be the strange-but-true story of the marbled crayfish, an invasive freshwater species suspected to have been created through a reproductive accident in an aquarium around 1995. A new analysis of the crustacean’s genome supports this unlikely origin and may help explain how the animal has subsequently spread and adapted to so many new environments.

The crayfish’s unusual evolution could also suggest a strategy to tackle a more infamous clonal monster: cancer. “In many ways, the invasive expansion of [the marbled crayfish] is analogous to a cancerous lineage spreading asexually at the expense of its host,” says Jean-François Flot, an evolutionary genomicist at the Free University of Brussels who was not involved with the work.

The marbled crayfish is the only decapod crustacean that reproduces asexually, with the all-female species making clones of itself from eggs unfertilized by sperm. It has been thought to have arisen when two slough crayfish, imported from Florida for the aquarium trade in Germany, mated.

Since its discovery in 1995 in Germany, the marbled crayfish has spread across Europe and into Africa in huge numbers. “They eat anything—rotten leaves, snails or fish broods, small fish, small insects," says Frank Lyko, a molecular geneticist at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. “This crayfish is a serious pest,” adds Gerhard Scholtz, an evolutionary biologist at Humboldt University in Berlin, who has tracked its rapid spread across the globe, including Madagascar, where its success threatens the existence of the seven crayfish native to that island country. The European Union banned the species: It must not be sold, kept, distributed, or released to the wild.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/aquarium-accident-may-have-given-crayfish-dna-take-over-world

I'm sorry, but if it's the best at what it does, turn it into food. Who doesn't love Granny's smoked crawdads?

 

[Saint_Ann]

They don't need males to reproduce...interesting.

 

[WoundedKnee]

Millions of virgin births. Holy Hey Zeus!

 

[Hypoxia]

They don't need males to reproduce...interesting.

Splice their genes into Slovenians to make self-reproducing beauty contestants. Tromp will approve that NIH project.

 

[Saint_Ann]

Splice their genes into Slovenians to make self-reproducing beauty contestants. Tromp will approve that NIH project.

I'm craving Étouffée.

 

[WoundedKnee]

Can there be no thread where the Trump haters do not try to work their Magic H8Balls?

 

[Adre]

Not so long ago your side was doing the same with Barry. How’s it feel?

 

[WoundedKnee]

????

 

[JohnnySavage]

I've never had crawdads

 

[ryan8558]

http://www.myinvisiblecrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/boiled-crfawfish.jpg

 

[Rightguide]

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/ac1da8eb-3a40-4962-ad41-ff841c3cfadd



http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/aquarium-accident-may-have-given-crayfish-dna-take-over-world

I'm sorry, but if it's the best at what it does, turn it into food. Who doesn't love Granny's smoked crawdads?

The new NOW logo:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7d/0b/2f/7d0b2f2c8b2cfdd43ace9ddc4f251a30.png

I suspect they will file a lawsuit to strip the species of the name "Crawdad" and demand the new name "Crawmom."

 

[Amoebah]

Asexual reproduction should be a comforting concept to this audience.

 

[Hypoxia]

Asexual reproduction should be a comforting concept to this audience.

You watched FERRIS BUELLER not long ago, I'll guess.