Over the past five years, Dr. Lyko and his colleagues have sequenced the genomes of marbled crayfish. In a study published on Monday, the researchers demonstrate that the marble crayfish, while common, is one of the most remarkable species known to science.
Before about 25 years ago, the species simply did not exist. A single drastic mutation in a single crayfish produced the marbled crayfish in an instant.
The mutation made it possible for the creature to clone itself, and now it has spread across much of Europe and gained a toehold on other continents. In Madagascar, where it arrived about 2007, it now numbers in the millions and threatens native crayfish.
*marbled... NYT, not 'marble', like you wrote in the sentence directly before.... know what? Fuck it. Marbled/marble/garble/jarble... at least you didn't call it a cray-cray fish.
Pretty neat. Also neat are headlines about science!
http://www.businessinsider.com/marbled- ... ves-2018-2
Massive crayfish that didn't exist 25 years ago are capable of cloning themselves — and it's terrifying scientists
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02 ... the-world/
Mutant crayfish got rid of males, and its clones are taking over the world
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/ ... over-world
An aquarium accident may have given this crayfish the DNA to take over the world
My personal favourite:
https://www.perthnow.com.au/technology/ ... 49921dc72a
‘Cloverfield’ crayfish created a new species of self-replicating female mutants
It has claws, it's a she, the word "mutant" can be bandied-about - it's as though nature is writing the headlines for us! Heck, even the paper has a snazzy title!
https://www.nature.com/articles/421806a
Ecology: Parthenogenesis in an outsider crayfish
Or, you know, not so snazzy. Have another go at it, nerds!
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0467-9
Clonal genome evolution and rapid invasive spread of the marbled crayfish
Okay, science-ers, you should really think about letting the professional marketing people handle things from here.
Anyhow, pretty cool to see evolution at-large.