Freshwater crayfishes (Decapoda: Astacidea) of the Montana Entomology Collection, Montana State University

Astacidea (colloquially known as crayfish, crawfish, crawdads, or mudbugs) are well-recognized crustaceans, with distributions especially of interest to fisheries and aquatic ecologists. From 2018 to 2022, Montana Entomology Collection (MTEC), funded by the Council on Library and Information Resources “Hidden Collections” grant, digitized Astacidea (Crustacea: Decapoda) specimens housed in its museum. This produced over 160 metadata records detailing sampling localities, collecting dates, number of individuals, and identifications of specimens collected mainly from Montana, USA. The metadata records reveal the efforts of 28 collectors, spanning 60 years of sampling. This dataset makes information associated with 726 individual specimens from 5 species stored in the MTEC available.