Successful artificial incubation and juvenile-rearing of dropped eggs of a critically endangered freshwater crayfish (Cherax tenuimanus)

Rodney E. Duffy; Blaine Hodgson; Amber Quinn; Marcus Newman

doi:10.1071/MF25063

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Successful artificial incubation and juvenile-rearing of dropped eggs of a critically endangered freshwater crayfish (Cherax tenuimanus)

Rodney E. Duffy

^A ^* , Blaine Hodgson ^A , Amber Quinn ^A and Marcus Newman ^A

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Perth, WA 6000, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: rodney.duffy@dpird.wa.gov.au

Handling Editor: Richard Marchant

Marine and Freshwater Research 76, MF25063 https://doi.org/10.1071/MF25063

Submitted: 20 March 2025 Accepted: 16 July 2025 Published: 11 August 2025

© 2025 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

One-third of the world’s freshwater crayfish species face extinction risk, necessitating extreme and urgent conservation measures such as captive rearing. Little information exists on these measures for most threatened species. The hairy marron, Cherax tenuimanus (Parastacidae), is a critically endangered freshwater crayfish endemic to the Margaret River in south-western Western Australia. C. tenuimanus is being rapidly replaced by the smooth marron, Cherax cainii, a translocated congener, causing its progressive decline in range, and now it faces imminent extinction in the wild. Attempts at captive breeding have resulted in few occurrences of egg laying of C. tenuimanus, which ended in complete loss of the clutch as eggs were progressively dropped by the female. To assess the potential of dropped eggs in captive rearing, we trialled ex situ artificial incubation techniques by using eggs dropped from a captively held female. Of 41 dropped eggs, 85% were successfully hatched in suspension upwellers, and 74% of the subsequent juveniles were reared successfully for 111 days in a purpose-built recirculating aquaculture system. We describe our protocols and facilities in detail because captive rearing of dropped eggs was demonstrated to be a viable option for improved success of captive reproduction. These approaches may be applicable for conserving similar crayfish species.

Keywords: Astacidea, captive breeding, conservation, egg disinfection, hairy marron, introduced species, Margaret River, Western Australia.

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