08/12/2026
Introducing North America’s newest described crayfish species, the Enigma Crayfish, Cambarus emegi!
Describing a new species of crayfish is no easy task. It can take years or even decades of field work, museum collection visits, data collection, and genetic analyses to understand a species well enough to describe it. Cambarus emegi is the result of nearly 20 years of work by our collaborator Dr. David Lieb, along with Dr. Bronwyn Williams, David Foltz, Dr. Loughman, and dozens of members of the WLU Crayfish Lab over the last decade.
Cambarus emegi has a unique distribution, with disjunct populations occurring in the lower Delaware River drainage in Pennsylvania and the upper James and Roanoke River drainages in Virginia. Although these populations are separated by hundreds of miles, genetic and morphological evidence shows that they represent the same species.
The species and common names have an interesting story as well. The common name, Enigma Crayfish, refers to the enigmatic nature of the Cambarus species C. complex, a group of crayfishes that has puzzled researchers for decades. The species name, emegi, comes from the Turkish word “emeği,” meaning “labor of” or “hard work of,” reflecting the many years of work that went working on this species description. It also honors Emily and Megan Lieb, Dr. Lieb’s daughters, who accompanied him on crayfish sampling trips to collect C. emegi in Pennsylvania.
Like many species of crayfish we study, the story of the Enigma Crayfish is also about their conservation. The species has a limited distribution and is threatened by invasive crayfishes, urban and agricultural development, and habitat degradation. In several areas in Pennslyvania, invasive crayfishes have already displaced C. emegi from portions of its former range.
