A long-term, vivid collaboration between Jiří Patoka from the Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, and Martin Bláha and Antonín Kouba from the Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice yielded a further description of a new crayfish species. The newly described dusty crayfish Cherax pulverulentus is endemic to the streams west of the Ayamaru Lake in Papua Province, Indonesia. It features distinct color morphs and possesses a unique morphology and genetics supporting its species status.
Many attractively colored crayfish species endemic to this region are often field-captured and subsequently exported by Indonesian wholesalers to pet markets, especially in Europe, the USA, and Japan. For instance, the dusty cray has been traded at the aquarium market for more than 20 years as “Blue Moon” or “Irian Jaya” crayfish. Formal scientific descriptions of new species are crucial for the proper management of pet-traded crayfish in their native range, given their catches remain unregulated, threatening their restricted populations. It also appears that they can be kept irresponsibly, as evidenced by a dumped individual captured at a thermal locality in Hungary and in our previous research (Bláha et al., 2022).
Detailed information can be found in the original article:
Patoka, J., Akmal, S.G., Bláha, M., Kouba, A., 2025. Cherax pulverulentus, a new freshwater crayfish (Decapoda: Parastacidae) from Southwest Papua Province, Indonesia. Zootaxa 5566: 522–534. https://mapress.com/zt/article/view/zootaxa.5566.3.4
