Invasive crayfish lead to more mosquitoes and risk of disease in Southern California

Invasive red swamp crayfish are a serious problem in the Santa Monica Mountains and other parts of Southern California. They devastate native wildlife, including threatened species such as the California red-legged frog, throwing off the natural balance of ecosystems.They also pose a threat to people, according toa new paper in the journal Conservation Biology. The study is based on field research in the Santa Monica Mountains and lab experiments at UCLA  La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science.Mosquitos are notorious vectors that spread diseases such as malaria, Zika and West Nile virus. In the mountains, mosquito populations are kept in check by dragonfly nymphs, which voraciously consume their aquatic larvae. But invasive crayfish disrupt that predator-prey relationship, killing and driving dragonfly nymphs from waterways. And while crayfish also consume mosquito larvae, they ’re simply not as good at it, the researchers found.U.S. Geological SurveyDragonfly nymph“A lot of people don’t know this but before dragonflies are flying around and beautiful, they actually are these voracious predators in streams and ponds,” said Gary Bucciarelli, a UCLA conservation biologist and the paper’s lead author. “They do a great job of preying on other invertebrat es in the streams we work on.”After noticing that streams with the crayfish had almost no dragonfly nymphs and lots of mosquito larvae, Bucciarelli and other scientists decided to investigate further. ...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news