Red Swamp Crayfish

The red swamp crayfish is native to freshwater wetlands, swamps, and slow moving waters of northern Mexico and the south central United States, most closely associated with the state of Louisiana. It has a deep red shell as an adult, with bumpy, raised ridges across its body, and burrows readily into muddy banks. The species anchors a major regional food industry, farmed extensively in flooded rice fields and ponds and served in large quantities at traditional crawfish boils. It has also been introduced deliberately and accidentally to freshwater systems across Europe, Africa, and Asia, where it has become one of the most widespread invasive crayfish species in the world, outcompeting native crayfish and damaging levees and irrigation banks with its burrows. Like several other North American crayfish, it carries a fungal pathogen, crayfish plague, without being harmed by it, spreading the disease to more vulnerable native crayfish species wherever it is introduced. It is a hardy omnivore able to tolerate low oxygen, poor water quality, and periods of drought by retreating into burrows.