@BWWilliamsLab cool video! Being in Louisiana now I have a whole new appreciation for crayfish (I mean, crawfish), including their diversity!
@BWWilliamsLab we usually have a bunch in the lab for teaching experiments. This one is gravid! One of my PhD students is raising one of the eggs that fell off.
@TheKaneLab if you ever want to go down a fun rabbit hole with the students - or in general - see if you can find branchiobdellidans and entocytherid ostracods on the crayfish. There is so much we don’t know about these communities: what they are, how they formed and are maintained in ecological and evolutionary time, how each taxon individually and together responds to stressors (like increased salinities). 🧐 (My brain should be named ‘Rabbit Holes R Us’)
@TheKaneLab thank you! I started working with crayfishes in the Canadian Prairie Provinces, where there is 1 very widespread species (Virile Crayfish), albeit with a complicated post-glacial history. Even so, the local variations were mind boggling. When I landed my job here in NC, I was a bit like a kid in a candy store. So much diversity, taxonomically, ecologically, behaviorally, etc. (& phenomenal collaborators). The more we learn, the less we know. It’s both daunting and exciting.