Cherax pulcher, beautiful in blue (Image: Christian Lukhaup)

It has been one of the aquarium trade’s mystery stars. But although specimens of this colourful crayfish have been on sale since the early 2000s, no one was sure of its species name or where it came from.

Suppliers are secretive to stop others muscling in on their business, says Christian Lukhaup, an independent researcher from Germany. So he did his own detective work on the crayfish’s origins.

“It is like an investigation in a crime case,” Lukhaup says. “This is the only way to find out more.”


There were some clues. The crayfish looked like members of Cherax, a large genus occurring in New Guinea and Australia, and some dealers claimed they came from west part of New Guinea in Indonesia. So Lukhaup headed to the island’s West Papua province and asked local people if they had ever seen it. Eventually, he found specimens in a creek.

Detailed study revealed it was a new species. In honour of its appearance, he named it Cherax pulcher – pulcher meaning “beautiful” in Latin.

“It is a knockout. It is gorgeous,” says Zen Faulkes from the University of Texas-Pan American.

But he worries about the threats that the species is already facing. “We have got this beautiful species that people are harvesting for the pet trade, and it may be from this tiny location, and it could be wiped out before we know anything about them,” Faulkes says.

Real gone guy

The human population in the area is growing fast and locals are also catching the crayfish for food, which adds to pressures of habitat loss and pollution, Lukhaup says.

Zachary Loughman from West Liberty University, West Virginia, shares these concerns. “It is only known from one site,” he says. “It may have a broad range, or might be limited to that one stream system. And if anything happens to that particular stream system in Indonesia, this guy is gone.”

Loughman says crayfish are one of the most imperilled animal groups on the planet.

“When people picture endangered species, they picture pandas, tigers and whales, and they are certainly endangered, but very few people actually realise that roughly 50 per cent of the world’s crayfish are undergoing some form of imperilment,” Loughman says.

The two most common threats to crayfish are habitat degradation and the spread of invasive crayfish “Both of these issues are driven by man either destroying crayfish habitat, or introducing invasive crayfish outside their native range,” he says.

Journal reference: ZooKeys, DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.502.9800