crayfish
aardvarchaeology | August 23, 2014It's the time of the year when it used to become legal to catch and sell Swedish crayfish (since 1994 there is no limit), and so the grocery stores sell Turkish and Chinese crayfish for a few weeks. The traditional way to eat them is to boil them with dill, salt and a little sugar, and serve them with toast, strong cheese, beer and akvavit. I don't drink but I love shellfish, so crayfish time is always a treat for me. My wife, being refreshingly unorthodox about traditional Swedish customs, and indeed about all traditional customs thanks to a Maoist childhood, served crayfish with smoked…
jchosy | April 16, 2010Researchers at the University of Hull, UK, recently published a paper about chemical signaling in reproductive behavior in crayfish. Yep, crayfish. Apparently, the female must release urinary cues in order to initiate courtship behavior in males. No pee, no sex. Unfortunately (and understandably), being peed on also triggers aggression in this species. The authors argue the female crayfish use their influential bodily fluids to stimulate aggression in males to gauge size and strength in prospective mates, allowing the females to choose the fittest males for subsequent copulation.
In male…
clock | February 1, 2009Long-time readers of this blog remember that, some years ago, I did a nifty little study on the Influence of Light Cycle on Dominance Status and Aggression in Crayfish. The department has moved to a new building, the crayfish lab is gone, I am out of science, so chances of following up on that study are very low. And what we did was too small even for a Least Publishable Unit, so, in order to have the scientific community aware of our results, I posted them (with agreement from my co-authors) on my blog. So, although I myself am unlikely to continue studying the relationship between the…