Devil Crayfish

National Range: “very wide spread east of the Rockies and south of the Great Lakes, except peninsular Florida and the Alleghenies; not reported northeast of New Jersey in the East and east of western Pennsylvania in the Mississippi drainage system” (Hobbs Jr. 1989); “throughout Cumberlands (Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama), avoiding areas of high gradient” (Bouchard 1974)

NC Physiographic Region(s): eastern piedmont and coastal plain

River Basin(s): Cape Fear (eastern piedmont and coastal plain), Chowan, Lumber, Neuse, Northeast Cape Fear, Pasquotank, Roanoke (eastern piedmont and coastal plain), Tar-Pamlico, Waccamaw, White Oak, lower Yadkin-Pee Dee (Sandhills region)

Adult Habitat: “burrows (primary burrower); often found in ponds or streams in the spring season” (Hobbs Jr. 1989); “Primary burrower along water courses and in low swampy areas.  Adults, and especially juveniles, also collected in epigean bodies of water” (Bouchard 1974); under logs in riffle; “can be excavated almost anywhere where water table is near surface; lives as primary burrower” (NHP ICAS 1999)

Reproductive Season: “amplexus in fall; spring brooding” (NHP ICAS 1999)

Species associates: many

Conservation status:  not protected

Identification references: Cooper 1999, Hobbs Jr. 1989, Hobbs Jr. 1991

Taxonomic Description:

• body shape: carapace vaulted
• coloration: reddish-brown or grayish with bright or pastel shades of red and blue along margins and crevices
• spines: lacking marginal, cephalic, and cervical spines
• rostrum: wide and squarish, somewhat long; concave; small pinched acumen
• areola: linear (or nearly so), or obliterated
• chelae: robust; strong dorsolatitudinal ridges; having broad shallow curved excision in proximal half of movable dactyl; large tubercle about midway on mesial margin of fixed finger
• other characteristics: eyes well developed
• form I male gonopod: corneous central projection somewhat rounded and not bearing subapical notch; central projection longer than mesial process; mesial process inflated and bulbous at base, tapering distally

Notes:  Hobbs Jr. and Bouchard believed this to be a species complex needing attention; often creates chimneys to its burrows; widely distributed in tidewater areas; “often cited as pest for burrowing in todykes, levees, etc.” (NHP ICAS 1999)