Typhlocaris ayyaloni

The crayfish or crab

This species grows to 4 to 5 cm in length and is blind.

Range and habitat

It was found living in a small pool of sulphide-rich, brackish water. It is one of eight new species recently discovered in the area, the others being Tethysbaena ophelicola, Metacyclops longimaxillis, Metacyclops subdolus, Akrav israchanani (a land species, only found dead and also in other parts of the cave), Ayyalonia dimentmani (land species), Lepidospora ayyalonica (land species), and a still-unnamed species in the genus Collembola.

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

This species is endangered as it is known only in the Yarkon-Taninim Aquifer, that is experiencing diminishing water levels.

Typhlocaris ayyaloni 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 Typhlocaris ayyaloni, Wikidata item Q14509641. 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.