Genetic comparisons of German populations of the stone crayfish, Austropotamobius torrentium (Crustacea : Astacidae)

Austropotamobius torrentium (SCHRANK, 1803) is the smallest of the European native crayfish species and has probably never been of economic interest. It is confined to headwaters and adapted to cold water with high flow through and rocky environments. These properties make the stone crayfish a useful species for population genetics and phylogeographic studies. Representatives were collected from 18 localities throughout southern Germany and analysed with two mitochondrial genetic markers. Initial results revealed that German populations of A. torrentium from the Danube and Rhine tributaries share identical haplotypes in 528 basepairs of 16S rRNA and 658 basepairs of the COI gene. Rare haplotypes of the COI genes were occasionally encountered and apparently restricted to southwestern Bavaria. Only three variable sites were found over a length of 658 basepairs in 45 German, Swiss and Austrian stone crayfish resulting in five different haplotypes, with the prevalence of one most common haplotype. Here we show that in German populations rare haplotypes are not randomly distributed, but found in higher frequencies in the Bavarian Alps of the Allgau and in adjacent Tyrol. On the other hand, stone crayfish population from the Bavarian Forest and the Rhine tributaries appear genetically impoverished, so far only showing the most common haplotype. Consequently, there are significant differences between the Allgau populations and the rest of the German populations in haplotype frequencies, resulting in a relatively high F-ST value. This finding is of importance for future conservation efforts of stone crayfish populations in Germany and Austria.