Zachary Loughman Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Crayfish Conservation Effort to Take Place in Southern W.Va.

The West Virginia Division of Highways is providing nearly $180,000 to West Liberty University to determine the effects of construction activities on endangered crayfish.

The West Virginia Division of Highways, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and West Liberty University are working together to move two protected crayfish species from bridge updates and replacements occurring in the next several years.

“The Division of Highways is thrilled to be part of an initiative that will benefit so many people as well as a native West Virginia species,” WVDOH Natural Resource Unit leader Traci Cummings said in a press release.

WVDOH endangered species specialist Sydney Burke added, “Transportation projects give us opportunities to work on rare wildlife in the area, and to find ways to conserve those species while ensuring the state’s roads and bridges are up to date and safe.”

The conservation initiative in the Big Sandy River watershed will begin in 2020. Undergraduate and graduate students from WLU Professor Zachary Loughman’s lab conducting field work with crayfish.

“My students and I want to do everything we can to get the word out about crayfish, why they’re important and what we need to do to save them,” Loughman said. “Through this initiative, we are excited to foster the connection communities already have with the streams and rivers in this region.

Students from West Liberty will track crayfish movements to better understand how they live, how they respond to bridge construction, and how the Division of Highways can improve bridge design and construction process to lessen the impacts on the populations.

The crayfish were protected in 2016 under the Endangered Species Act.

Ongoing erosion and sedimentation have made many streams within the region uninhabitable for the species. The Big Sandy crayfish (Cambarus callainus) is found in six isolated populations across Floyd and Pike counties, Kentucky; Buchanan, Dickenson, and Wise counties, Virginia; and McDowell and Mingo counties, West Virginia. The Guyandotte River crayfish (Cambarus veteranus) is found in only two streams in Wyoming County, West Virginia.

In a press release, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wrote tips on how anyone can help keep streams healthy for crayfish, trout and other wildlife:

Drive ATVs and vehicles on designated trails and not through or in streams.
Don’t dump chemicals into streams and report chemical spills to state environmental protection agencies.
During timber harvest, construction, or other projects, implement best management practices for sediment and erosion control.
Start a watershed group or assist in stream and water quality monitoring efforts.
Plant trees and other native woody vegetation along stream banks to help restore and preserve water quality.

New Crayfish Species Named after W.Va. Biology Professor

A new crayfish species found in West Virginia was just named after an enthusiastic crayfish expert who lives in here in the state.

Published in the Journal of Natural History this month, Cambarus loughmani was named after Zachary Loughman. Loughman himself has discovered and named several crayfish in the region. He’s a biology professor at West Liberty University who has been known to convert students into biology majors by teaching about… you guessed it, crawdads.

One such student (who also was one of his first students), David Foltz, was the lead author in the research cohort that named Cambarus loughmani.

“It is fitting that this crayfish be named in his honor as both he and the crayfish are reclusive, hard to track down, and when faced with adversity, never back down and often advance with arms flailing,” Foltz read from the published explanation that linked Cambarus louphmani to Loughman.

The newly named bright blue crayfish is found in ridgetop seeps throughout the Teays River Valley of Cabell, Kanawha, Lincoln, Mason, and Putnam counties – an area where Loughman actually began studying crayfish as a graduate student at Marshall University in the early 2000s.

This Guy Loves Crawdads, Snakes, and Teaching

Zachary Loughman has built a career as a naturalist and a scientist by not letting his inner 10-year-old boy grow up.

He has discovered, identified, and named 10 new crayfish species here in North America, and as an Associate Professor of Biology at West Liberty University, he’s shared his fascination for the species with countless students.

“Everyone loves crayfish,” he said. “Anybody who grew up next to a creek knows what a crawdad is, so I basically have the dream job of every ten year old in West Virginia.”

West Liberty student Audrey Sykes said Loughman is “easily one of the most passionate, enthusiastic and memorable professors that I’ve ever had.

“The way he feels about crayfish is inspiring.”

Loughman’s research has been featured in Science Magazine, National Geographic, and in the neuroscience publication Neuron, among others.

While he’s built a name for himself through crayfish research, Loughman said he was more of a snake guy growing up. He still loves them — he even has a bunch in his office. His fascination with crayfish, though, stemmed from a conversation with his adviser while Loughman was workinghis masters degree at Marshall University.

“I was driving home from my thesis site with Dr. Polly and he said, ‘I’ve been watching you, you really like natural history. You don’t have to study snakes for natural history, study something no one has put much effort into.’ Of course there were people who studied crayfish before me, but no one had looked at it from a naturalist perspective. Soon after that, I was focusing less and less on snakes and more on crawdads.”

Loughman said his career as a professor and biologist has stemmed from a lifelong curiosity with the natural world.

“Naturalists, as I like to identify as, we have a very different perspective of the natural world in that when we see animals, we immediately start asking questions,” he said. “When I see a snake or a crayfish, especially one I haven’t seen before, my first thought isn’t, ‘What is my hypothesis going to be?’ It’s: ‘Wow, this is cool!’ Then I immediately follow that up with, ‘What are you?’”

The Big Sandy Crayfish is found in Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. It’s listed as a threatened species and protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Loughman takes students all over the region, from the Northern Panhandle where he found red crayfish with bright blue features, to the southern coalfields, where he discovered a new kind of crayfish.

He’s even had some fun naming them.

“I described a crayfish thats endemic to the Tug River which is shared between Kentucky and West Virginia and gave it the name Cambarus Hatfieldi after the Hatfields of infamy.”

The Faculty Merit Foundation of West Virginia named Loughman the state’s Professor of the Year in 2014. He’s been teaching graduate and undergraduate students for eleven years at West Liberty, and he said he loves education almost more than he loves looking for crawdads in streams.

“Whenever I get outside and I’m teaching, or I get to do the field work, or I’m bouncing down the road in a van full of college kids that it’s my job to teach and turn into the next generation of conservation biologists.

That is nothing but wonderful.”

West Liberty Crayfish Researcher Named Professor of the Year

A West Liberty University researcher has been named the Faculty Merit Foundation of West Virginia’s Professor of the Year.

The foundation presented Zachary Loughman with its annual award Tuesday night at a banquet in Charleston.

Loughman is an assistant biology professor whose research focuses on North American crayfish. He has named three species of crayfish, including one found in the Tug Fork region, and his laboratory conducted a five-year survey of crayfish in all 55 counties.

Loughman received a $10,000 cash award.

Other finalists were Lisa Di Bartolomeo and Powsiri Klinkhachorn of West Virginia University, Harald Menz of Bethany College, and William Palmer of Marshall University.

The Faculty Merit Foundation was created in 1984 to recognize and reward innovation and creativity at West Virginia’s public and private colleges and universities.

Enter the World of West Virginia Crayfish Research

Crayfish are one of the most endangered animal groups in the country, but recently a scientist at West Liberty University discovered three new species–and says there may be more on the way. That’s not a big surprise if you know Zachary Loughman. He’s one of only nine crayfish biologists in the country and maybe the most enthusiastic.

“Any second of any day I will look for crayfish. Period,” Loughman says.

He says Appalachia is the perfect place to research crayfish because it’s such an ecologically diverse region.

“If you would have told me when I was here at West Liberty as a student that I would be naming new species of crayfish I would have looked at you like you were a crazy person,” Loughman says.

I recently spent a day with him and his team to learn all about the multi-colored, lobster-like creatures, and how West Virginians can keep them healthy.

New Species of Crayfish in West Virginia:

Cambarus hatfieldi —named after the famous feuding Hatfield family because species is found in Mate Creek, the same creek on which the Hatfield’s homestead was built
Cambarus theepiensis —the root word there theepi is the Shawnee word for “river” since the crayfish is found in a historically Shawnee territory throughout the Guyandotte River
Cambarus smilax —‘smilax’ being the plant genus name for ‘Greenbrier,’ because this new species lives in the Greenbrier River

Zachary Loughman, has been studying crayfish for about a decade. He says he chose crayfish because no one else really has.

A World Unknown

A lot about crayfish is shrouded in mystery, from simple things like, how long they live, to more complicated queries like, how they raise their young. Loughman says that makes the job very exciting—nothing but discoveries.

“We definitely found out that they aren’t little robots—they all kind of do their own thing,” Loughman says with a half-smile.

For all we don’t know about crayfish, we DO know that they are the 3rd most endangered animal group in the country. Two of the major threats are:

Today you can find more than 60 crawdads living in a variety of aquariums in Loughman’s West Liberty lab. And so, so many more pickled and cataloged. It’s crazy.

#1 Threat to Crayfish: Stream Sedimentation

Loughman says not finding crayfish in a stream is a pretty good indicator that something, or more likely someone has disturbed the ground in the watershed around the stream causing sediment to clog all the little spaces between the rocks where crayfish like to chill.

Loughman explains that while they are still working to discover all of the roles that crayfish play in stream ecology, one key role is creating avenues by which many other stream-dwellers move about.

“So when the crayfish go away,” he says, “slowly but surely all of the creatures that depend on them fade out, too.”

Loughman says the Big Sandy Crayfish is an example of a species that needs protection now, or it might face extinction:

Big Sandy Crayfish (Cambarus veteranus) In the late 80s, it was known from seventeen streams throughout the southern coalfields. It is now only known from three streams.

#2 Threat to Crayfish: Invasion

“All it takes [to introduce devastating effects of invasive species]—it’s been proven in other states—is one person repeatedly bringing crayfish from one stream to another stream,” Loughman says.

He explains that crayfish have developed home-turfs over a millennia, and it’s easy to disrupt those ecosystems and throw everything out of whack. Invasive species hijacking steam systems is resulting in big problems for everything from insects to the human fishing industry. Especially in Europe.

URGENT MESSAGE FROM LOUGHMAN TO FISHING FOLKS: “If you’re fishing in Wheeling Creek, get your bait from Wheeling Creek. Don’t get your bait from Wheeling Creek and then drive over to the Potomac River and use that bait,” Loughman says. He says when folks use crayfish as bait, it’s really really important to the ecology of the stream for them NOT TO drop their living leftover crawdads into a stream if the crayfish came from somewhere else. Apparently, it’s a pretty competitive world in crawdad land and we can really mess up the balance of power by flinging crayfish about. Please tell all your fishing friends. Seriously. Thanks.

North America Invades Europe

Quick fact: West Virginia has 30 species of Crayfish that we know of, so far. Europe has 8 or 9.

Someone up and popped some North American crayfish all covered in fungus, into some European streams. That’s really bad news because that fungus is deadly to native European crayfish.

“As these native European crayfish are wiped out, our guys take over and North American crayfish behave a little differently than European crayfish—they dig a lot more. So you end up with stream bank failure, a loss of diversity, it’s having economical impacts.”

Loughman says there are a BUNCH of crayfish biologists in Europe now, because the invasion is so problematic and ultimately wrecking economic and environmental havoc. But his efforts remain in Appalachia, where he has plenty to keep him busy:

“If you go to places like Mon National Forest to collect crayfish, I’m a very happy guy and everything is wonderful. If I drop down onto the plateau near any of our big cities—Wheeling, Parkersburg, Clarksburg, Huntington, Charleston—then I start to get a little bit sad, because the crayfish numbers are down and there are sedimentation issues everywhere.”