Burrowing blue creature with pinchers found on TN college campus may be a new species
Two students were walking along a nature trail at their Tennessee university when they came across a “unique looking” blue creature.
What they found might be a new species, according to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.
The class assignment for Joe Calloway and Breanna Mathes was to find a frog, but they ended up finding a burrowing crayfish on campus, Tusculum University officials wrote in a Sept. 24 news release.
“I’m kind of in disbelief,” Mathes said in the release. “It’s hard to believe that Joe and I were just casually looking for frogs one day and we stumbled on a potential new species.”
Calloway previously interned at the TWRA, so he sent a photo of the crayfish to Carl Williams, a TWRA wildlife technician, the university said.
Williams wanted to investigate, so the students returned to the same area the next day and captured a specimen for him, according to the release.
The students found the first crayfish in a pond next to the nature trail on campus, the release said. The environment at the Tennessee school provides the perfect cool, wetland habitat for creatures like a burrowing crayfish, Williams said.
The two students caught their crayfish in February, the university said. In April, the TWRA came out to campus to catch more specimens to study.
“We molted them out, and they were pretty unique looking,” Williams said. “They were definitely not what you would find on the Cumberland Plateau or in the Blue Ridge, so that gave us a suspicion these were probably something new. It’s fun to pick something up and think, ‘This could be the first time anyone has ever held this species in their hand.’”
Researchers will send samples of the students’ crayfish as well as samples from other crayfish populations to Yale University to determine if the creatures are a new species.
It could take a few years to learn if they’re an entirely new species, according to Williams.
Calloway graduated this spring in environmental science, while Mathes, a senior, is pursuing degrees in environmental science and biology. Mathes will present a poster on the discovery this fall, the university said.
“It was very shocking to find that species out there considering we had no idea it was there or how long it was there,” Mathes said. “It was amazing to see how easy it was hiding under our noses and we didn’t even know it.”
A couple years ago, the TWRA surveyed an area in Greene County, where the university is located, and found blue crayfish then, too, Williams said. However, that specimen looked slightly different than the one caught on campus.
Williams said it could come down to a slight variation between populations, or they could be two distinct species entirely. He said he’s excited to find out, and so are the students.
“East Tennessee is highly diverse in the number of fish and plant species, and I am happy that Breanna and I might have found another example,” Calloway said. “I am looking forward to seeing the results of the examination and will be pleased if Tusculum was the source of something distinct.”
Tusculum University is located in northeast Tennessee, near the North Carolina border and about 200 miles northwest of Charlotte.
This story was originally published September 27, 2023 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Burrowing blue creature with pinchers found on TN college campus may be a new species."