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Orconectes cooperi

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Taxonomy [top]

Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family
ANIMALIA ARTHROPODA CRUSTACEA DECAPODA CAMBARIDAE

Scientific Name: Orconectes cooperi
Species Authority: Cooper & Hobbs, 1980
Common Name/s:
English – Flint River Crayfish

Assessment Information [top]

Red List Category & Criteria: Least Concern ver 3.1
Year Published: 2010
Assessor/s: Schuster, G.A., Adams, S. & Taylor, C.A.
Reviewer/s: Collen, B. & Richman, N.
Contributor/s: Livingston, F., Livingston, F., Soulsby, A.-M., Batchelor, A., Dyer, E., Whitton, F., Milligan, H.T., Smith, J., Lutz, M.L., De Silva, R., McGuinness, S., Kasthala, G., Jopling, B., Sullivan, K. & Cryer, G.
Justification:
Orconectes cooperi has been assessed as Least Concern.  This species has a relatively small range and is restricted to a single river basin, however there are no known threats to this species, which inhabits a relatively rural area.  Expansion of the Huntsville metropolitan area could potentially lead to impacts from urbanization in the future. Consequently, monitoring of the growth of this urban centre and its subsequent impacts on the species is recommended. Further research is required to determine the abundance of this species, and to what extent it is impacted upon by threats within its range.
History:
1996 – Vulnerable

Geographic Range [top]

Range Description: This species was first found at the Brier Fork of the Flint River in Madison County, Alabama (Cooper and Hobbs 1980). It is now known to be restricted to the Flint River Watershed, Madsion County, Alabama and the head waters of the Flint River in Lincoln County, Tennessee (Cooper and Hobbs 1980).

It is known from only 7 localities, primarily in the Flint River (Tennessee system) in Madison County, Alabama (Mirarchi et al. 2004, Schuster and Taylor 2004, Schuster et al. 2008) and Lincoln County, Tennessee. In Tennessee, Williams and Bivens (2001) documented it in the Highland Rim province in the headwaters of the Flint River system in Lincoln County. This species has a distribution of approximately 2539 km2.
Countries:
Native:
United States (Alabama, Tennessee)
Range Map: Click here to open the map viewer and explore range.

Population [top]

Population: There is no population information available for this species.
Population Trend: Unknown

Habitat and Ecology [top]

Habitat and Ecology: This species is found in stream habitats, most commonly along the edges amongst leaf litter (Cooper and Hobbs 1980).  The streams in which it has been found support a wide variety of crayfish species due to high levels of habitat heterogeneity (Cooper and Hobbs 1980).  Furthermore, these streams get much deeper during flooding in winter and spring (Cooper and Hobbs 1980).
Systems: Freshwater

Threats [top]

Major Threat(s):

There are no known major threats impacting this species. This species inhabits a rural area, however, urbanization of the growing Huntsville metropolitan area may impact the species in the future (S. Adams, G. Schuster and C. Taylor pers. comm. 2009).

Conservation Actions [top]

Conservation Actions:

There are no species-specific conservation measures in place for this species. This species has been given a NatureServe Global Heritage Status Rank of G1, and was assigned an American Fisheries Society Status of Endangered based on its restricted range (Taylor et al. 2007, NatureServe 2009). Further research is required to determine the abundance of this species, and to what extent it is impacted upon by threats within its range. 


Bibliography [top]

Cooper, M. R. and H. H. Hobbs, Jr. 1980. New and little-known crayfishes of the virilis section of genus Orconectes (Decapoda: Cambaridae) from the southeastern United States. Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology 320: 1-44.

IUCN. 2010. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (ver. 2010.3). Available at: http://www.iucnredlist.org. (Accessed: 2 September 2010).

Mirarchi, R.E., Bailey, M.A., Garner, J.T., Haggerty, T.M., Best, T.L., Mettee, M.F. and O'Neil, P. 2004. Alabama Wildlife. Volume Four: Conservation and Management Recommendations for Imperiled Wildlife. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

NatureServe. 2009. NatureServe Explorer: An online encyclopedia of life [web application]. Version 7.1. Internet

Schuster, G.A. and Taylor, C.A. 2004. Report on the crayfishes of Alabama: literature and museum database review, species list with abbreviated annotations and proposed conservation statuses. Illinois Natural History Survey Technical Report, 2004.

Schuster, G.A,Taylor, C.A, and Johansen J. 2008. An Annotated Checklist and Preliminary Designation of Drainage Distributions of the Crayfishes of Alabama. Southeastern Naturalist 7(3): 493-504.

Taylor, C. A., Schuster, G.A., Cooper, J.E., DiStefano, R.J., Eversole, A.G., Hobbs III, H.H., Robison, H.W., Skelton, C.W. and Thoma, R.F. 2007. Conservation Status of Crayfish Species. Fisheries 32(8): 371-381.

Williams, C.E. and Bivens, R.D. 2001. Annotated List of the Crayfishes of Tennessee.
Citation: Schuster, G.A., Adams, S. & Taylor, C.A. 2010. Orconectes cooperi. In: IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.2. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded on 19 June 2013.
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