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from the you-say-crayfish-I-say-crawfish dept.
No one knows exactly when the clones first appeared, but humans only became aware of them in the early 2000s.
It was a German aquarium owner who first brought it to scientists' attention. In 1995, he had acquired a bag of "Texas crayfish" from an American pet trader, only to find his tank inexplicably filling up with the creatures. They were all, it turns out, clones. Sometime, somewhere, the biological rule that making baby crayfish required a mama crayfish and papa crayfish was no longer inviolate. The eggs of the hobbyist's all-female crayfish did not need to be fertilized. They simply grew into copies of their "mother"—in a process known as parthenogenesis.
Crayfish specialists were astonished. No one had seen anything like it. But the proof was before their eyes and in 2003, scientists dubbed the creatures marbled crayfish, or Marmorkreb in German.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/attack-of-the-crayfish-clones/552236/
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:33PM
There is that higher reproduction rate though. I think such a problem would resolve itself via disease. That's probably why we see less such cloning in the natural world in the first place. It'll probably turn out that crayfish and related species have been able to switch to a "clone" mode for some time and even receive some evolutionary advantage when they do so, but the process doesn't happen all the time because of die offs of such populations when disease takes root.
There are species with parthenogensis [bbc.com]. However, if a species can switch back and forth it can have a temporary advantage in a changing environment. I don't know if it was a hypothetical case or not but say in a flood plain where most pools dry up but there is livable water otherwise enough of the year to reproduce, it would be an advantage. Clones suited to a spot would spread like wildfire and then later as disease or some other factor culls the population, variation through sexual reproduction could occur.
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