From The Daily Star, February 13, 2008
By Jake Palmateer
Staff Writer
A $6,910 grant recently awarded to a State University College at Oneonta professor will be used to study an invasive species of crayfish crawling the bottoms of area water bodies.
Thomas Horvath, a biology professor and the director of the environmental sciences program at SUCO, said Monday that the Mid-Atlantic Panel on Aquatic Invasive Species grant will be used to study the distribution of the rusty crayfish in the upper Susquehanna River basin. The threat the crayfish species poses to local ecosystems will also be examined.
Horvath said Monday that he will be working with graduate student Amanda Barber, who is from the Oneonta area, in studying the crayfish in the tributaries, lakes and ponds in the Susquehanna River valley as well as in the main stem of the Delaware River.
Barber, a 2000 graduate from Unatego Central School who received a bachelor's degree in biology from Siena College, said she was excited to be doing graduate work near her hometown that involves a local concern.
"It's pertinent to the environment around here," Barber said.
Barber said that as a child, she spent a lot of time in the woods and in the water looking for critters. This helped fuel her aspirations to study biology, she said.
The rusty crayfish is native to the Ohio and Indiana areas but has expanded its range into New York and other states.
The crayfish do not have as much of a high-profile impact as other invasive species such as zebra mussels, water chestnuts or Eurasian milfoil, Horvath said.
But they are known to out-compete native crayfish species and damage aquatic vegetation, he said.
"They may very well have an impact on fish," Horvath said.
The rusty crayfish is bigger and more aggressive than native species, Barber said.
If someone were to go to the Susquehanna River to catch crayfish, the ones they would get would most likely be rusty crayfish instead of native species, Horvath said.
"They tend to pop up in lakes first," he said.
This is believed to be in part because they are used as bait by fishermen, he said, who then introduce them to new regions.
"In the Susquehanna, they have without a doubt come from Otsego Lake," Horvath said.
The funding will be used to buy crayfish traps and other equipment to be used to survey area water bodies.
A website will be created that will allow Horvath and Barber to archive their findings and make them available to other researchers.
The ultimate goal would be to complete a statewide survey of rusty crayfish populations, Horvath said.
"The state of New York hasn't had a comprehensive crayfish survey done since the 1950s," he said.
Horvath said it is unclear if the crayfish can be eliminated from area waterways, but it may be possible to prevent their spread.
But first, he said, the extent of the rusty crayfish populations needs to be known, and with that, the damage to native species.
"We don't know how much has been lost," Barber said.
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