?What do you call the miniature lobster that one finds in lakes and streams (a crustacean of the family Cambaridae), as in the image below?
Before reading on, take the survey!! Inspired by Harvard’s Dialect Survey, I want to know what common name you have for the animal in the picture below (the survey is just one question). You can find results from the survey here. Then read on to find out more about the animal!
Crayfish in Vermont
A crawdad you catch
A crawfish you eat
A crayfish you study
There isn’t a lot of information (recent or old) about crayfish in the northeast. The two best resources are a publication from 1979 on crayfish of the northeast and the more recent guide to crayfish of the White River watershed, which only covers a small part of the state. On this site, you’ll find here information on the 10 native and non-native species that have been fouin Vermont, identification tips, an overview of crayfish life history, and activities to study crayfish.
The results from the quiz are taken from various Wildlife Ecology courses Teage has taught at CCV, Champlain College, and through Crow’s Path.
Identifying Crayfish
For most people, crayfish tend to all look like little brown lobsters. But once you learn what to look for, ID seems not just vaguely possibly, but actually easy and, dare I say, fun! It’s often easier to sex a crayfish than to identify a species, so here we’ll cover both species and sex identification.
Natural history of crayfish
Species identification is just one skill in coming to a deeper understanding of how crayfish fit into Vermont’s landscape. This section covers the anatomy, behavior, and life history of crayfish in general, and specific details on the species you’ll encounter in Vermont’s waterways.