Poster 1 – Prevalence of crayfish plague pethigen in the invasive signal crayfish Pacifastacus leniusculus in France POSTER
POSTER
This study compiled the works started by Filipova et al (2013) on the prevalence of A. astaci in 45 populations of signal crayfish in France and those performed this year on 53 additional populations. Until now, 1026 individuals from 92 populations have been analyzed. Results showed that 53 populations are infected with a total of 251 infected individuals with level of infection ranged from A 2 to A5. There is statistical difference between size of individuals and level of infection (p > 0.05). Several hypothese could be proposed to explain the heterogeneity of level of infections among populations such founder effect during stocking, population density or physical/chemical differences between habitats. Some regions showed high prevalences of the crayfish plague in populations of P. leniusculus. Signal crayfish could be considered as serious threat to native crayfish. Some mass mortality related to signal crayfish strain have already been reported in France.
