Endangered
Austropotamobius pallipes
Austropotamobius pallipes
Austropotamobius pallipes is an endangered European freshwater crayfish, and the only crayfish native to the British Isles.
Appearance
A. Pallipes is olive-brown, with pale undersides to the claws (whence its specific Latin epithet pallipes, "pale feet"). Its common names include white-clawed crayfish and Atlantic stream crayfish.
It may grow to 12 cm (4.7 in) long, and adult sizes below 10 cm (3.9 in) are more common.
Range and habitat
It is found from the easterly Balkan Peninsula to Spain and reaches its northerly limit in Great Britain, as well as Ireland (where it is considered introduced), where it is limited to some regions only: its highest densities are in chalk streams. A. Pallipes is the only crayfish found in Ireland, occurring over limestone areas in rivers, streams, canals, and lakes. In France, A. Pallipes is found in streams such as the Mornante and Sellon, two small tributaries of the Dorlay in the Loire department, where it is protected as a heritage species.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
Freshwater crayfishes and crabs walk the bed. Dams, silt, and introduced species cut a drainage into fragments they cannot cross.
Crayfishes and crabs need cover and clean water. A named form from one creek is not interchangeable with the next drainage.
In crisis
Austropotamobius pallipes is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Austropotamobius pallipes, Wikidata item Q966376. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
