New Texas Crawfish Crayfish Book

[Crawdude]

A new field guide for Texas Crayfish Crawfish species has recently been published. 37 species from Texas are included with distribution, conservation, biodiversity, maps, identification and LOTS of crawdad photos included. If you are interested in this publication please see details at www.texascrawdads.com. Much work is needed towards understanding the ranges of Texas crawfish, there is much opportunity for citizen scientists to document and contribute to the collection of this data. Please visit the website and if you see a crawfish in a ditch near you, please take a nice macro shot and document it.

Thanks,

N.K. Johnson

(excellent macros of crayfish may be taken by placing the live animal into a shallow pan of ice water with black felt on the bottom, this literally chills them out making them hold still long enough for really nice shots, don't shoot from directly over or the flash bounces back from the waters surface, more on crawdad photography in the book)

[bondarnes]

Maybe I should get that book for the GBH that fishes my pond each morning.

[Crawdude]

You definitely should. He would be most interested to know where to find Texas crayfish at. I am not certain what percent of his diet depends on finding crawfish but here is a paper that reports that for inland Texas over 72% of the little blue herons and snowy egrets diet is crayfish. Wow! I tell you it might make a bird lover suddenly worry about Texas running low on crawfish doesn't it? Hopefully this book will encourage a greater awarenes of the biodiversity and distribution and an appreciation for this absolutely critical organism place in keeping Texas ecosystems healthy.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=003...3E2.0.CO%3B2-H