Critically Endangered
Cambarus aculabrum
Cambarus aculabrum
Cambarus aculabrum is a crayfish in the family Cambaridae (order Decapoda), recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
As a stygobite it is adapted to groundwater environments. It lacks pigment, making it white in color, and has only rudimentary eyes.
It is about 48 millimeters (1.8 inches) long.
Range and habitat
The crayfish has been found living in three limestone solutional caves in the karst landscape of northern Arkansas. Bear Hollow Cave, Logan Cave and Old Pendergrass Cave in Benton County. Additionally, one specimen was found in a pool in Brush Creek in Washington County, having been flushed from the hyporheic zone by flooding. It is not considered an Arkansas endemic species because 58% of one of the Bear Hollow cave recharge zones lies within the neighboring state of Missouri, although it has not yet been found in that state.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Crayfishes hide under rock or in burrows and feed as omnivores. Stream species need cold, oxygenated water and an intact bank.
Freshwater crayfishes and crabs walk the bed. Dams, silt, and introduced species cut a drainage into fragments they cannot cross.
In crisis
As of 2006, the estimated total population of Benton county cave crayfish was less than 200 individuals. Due to its rarity and extremely restricted range, it was listed as endangered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) in 1993 and by the IUCN in 2004. A recovery plan was created by the USFWS in 1996.
A number of threats to the survival of this species have been identified. Habitat degradation due to groundwater pollution from residential septic systems and concentrated animal feeding operations has been identified as the main threat.
Cambarus aculabrum is Critically 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 Cambarus aculabrum, Wikidata item Q3934315. 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.
