Astacidae is a family of freshwater crayfish native to Europe, western Asia and western North America. The family is made up of four extant taxon (living) genera: The genera Astacus (which includes the European crayfish), Pontastacus (which includes the Turkish crayfish), and Austropotamobius are all found throughout Europe and parts of western Asia, while Pacifastacus (which includes the signal crayfish) is native to western United States and British Columbia, but has also been introduced elsewhere.
Classification and phylogeny
Astacidae belongs to the superfamily
Astacoidea, which contains all
crayfish in the Northern Hemisphere. Astacoidea is the
sister taxon to
Parastacoidea, which contains all crayfish of the Southern Hemisphere. Crayfish and
together comprise the
infraorder Astacidea, as shown in the simplified
cladogram below:
The internal phylogeny of Astacidae can be further shown in the cladogram below:
Species
The family Astacidae contains the following
genera and
species:
-
"Austropotamobius" llopisi (Via, 1971) - Las Hoyas, Spain Early Cretaceous (Barremian)
-
Astacus Fabricius, 1775
-
Austropotamobius Skorikov, 1907
-
Austropotamobius bihariensis (Pârvulescu, 2019) - Romania - "idle crayfish"
-
Austropotamobius fulcisianus (Ninni, 1886) - southern Europe (Italy, Croatia, Switzerland, Austria)
-
Austropotamobius pallipes (Lereboullet, 1858) - France - "white-clawed crayfish"
-
Austropotamobius torrentium (von Paula Schrank, 1803) - Germany, Croatia, North Macedonia - "stone crayfish"
-
Emplastron O'Flynn, Audo & Kawai, 2021
-
Pacifastacus Bott, 1950
-
Pacifastacus chenoderma (Cope, 1871) - Idaho, USA
-
Pacifastacus connectens (Faxon, 1914) - Idaho, USA
-
Pacifastacus fortis (Faxon, 1914) - California, USA - "Shasta crayfish"
-
Pacifastacus gambelii (Girard, 1852) - California, USA
-
Pacifastacus leniusculus (Dana, 1852) - Columbia River, west coast of North America - "signal crayfish"
-
Pacifastacus nigrescens (Stimpson, 1857) - around San Francisco, California, USA - "sooty crayfish" (recently extinct)
-
Pontastacus Bott, 1950
-
Pontastacus cubanicus (Birstein & Vinogradov, 1934) - Black Sea, Russia
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Pontastacus danubialis Brodsky, 1981 - Danube Delta lakes, Ukraine
-
Pontastacus daucinus Brodsky, 1981 - Danube Delta lakes, Ukraine and Moldova
-
Pontastacus eichwaldi (Bott, 1950) - Caspian Sea
-
Pontastacus kessleri (Schimkewitsch, 1886) - Turkestan
-
Pontastacus leptodactylus (Eschscholtz, 1823) - around the Black Sea, in Crimea, Russia, and Turkey - "Turkish crayfish"
-
Pontastacus pachypus (Rathke, 1837) - Caspian Sea, Black Sea, Sea of Azov - "Caspian crayfish"
-
Pontastacus pylzowi (Skorikov, 1907) - eastern part of Transcaucasia
-
Pontastacus salinus (von Nordmann, 1842) - Black Sea
