Just wanted to share a couple of photos of a cave crayfish I observed yesterday deep inside a cave in northern Alabama.
This species has eyes but is very pale colored. Without the camera flash, it was nearly colorless.
I left the crays where they were found, so I don't have any easy way to identify them, but I thought they were interesting enough to share. All of the ones I saw were rather small, and I did see some babies in the pools. In fact, at first I thought I was looking at shrimp until I caught one.
This is the sort of species that is best observed in the wild and then left there since it would be very difficult to recreate the cave environment they would need to thrive, but I'll post photos from time to time when I come across something interesting down in those caves.
I agree wholehearted with you about leaving them where you find them. Taking lots of pics can help when trying to ID them later. Excellent find anyway!
I read in one of those journal articles (don't really remember where) that cave populations of usually surface habitat dwelling species can lose all pigmentation but are identical to their "normal" conspecifics in all other respects. This might be one of those guys if it's not a pure cave species. Either way, since it still has eyes it's foray into cave habitats must have happened relatively recently.
I agree with Mustafa that this crayfish is most likely a more common crayfish from a population that has adapted to living in the caves. In this area, the streams in the caves usually flow out of them as a spring, so it is pretty easy for some critters to move back and forth between the caves and the streams.
I'm already planning to bring a net and a small container to hold the cave crayfish while I photograph them on future trips.
Yes, Vera, we do have a LOT of crayfish species here in Alabama, more than any other state. I too looked through the obvious cave crayfish photos I could find but couldn't find an easy match. When I have time, I will cross reference the photos I have, the list of Alabama species, and the illustrated checklist and see if how close I can get to identifying this species without having a proper specimen to work with.
