Artist's (mine) rendition of the marbled crayfish First of all, hello and welcome to my blog “Unwind the Helix”. The goal of this blog is loosely to discuss recent events in the world of biology, genetics, and evolution. While working on a full length piece on conservation and our role in the ecosystem, I came across a news article discussing the marbled crayfish, “ Geneticists Unravel Secrets of Super-invasive Crayfish ”. The main reason for this sensationalist title is due to the origin of this species and the unique traits they picked up. Photograph: Fredrik von Erichsen It is thought that this relatively new species was first observed/ created in the 90’s in a tank in Germany when two distant crayfish species accidentally happened to breed. The resultant mixed crayfish has three sets of chromosomes, as opposed to humans and most other animals (tripoid vs diploid), and is able to breed by itself, a trait called parthenogenesis. Because it can effectively clo...