Our series of interviews with leading karstologists now turns to cave biologist. David Culver, an emeritus professor of environmental science at the American University (Washington DC, USA), talks ...about his relationship to karst and what subterranean biology has given to the geoscientific disciplines and what it has taken from them. His science approach is well reflected in the statement: “In the last few decades, I have done valuable little completely independent research, and collaboration with people with different skill groups has been critical”.
Bats (Chiroptera) are divided into two suborders (Yinpterochiroptera and Yangochiroptera). More than 50% of species of bats use caves as their roosting sites. Thus, they play a crucial role in the ...cave ecosystem. For that reason, they also exist as keystone species in the karst area. Gunung Sewu is one of the karst areas in Indonesia that best exemplifies tropical karst. Furthermore, Gunung Sewu is still at risk of habitat loss despite being designated as a Geopark. This study aimed to understand the diversity of bats that live in caves in the karst region of Gunung Sewu, specifically in four caves near Ngobaran Beach between April and June 2020. A harp net and misnet placed at the cave’s entrance were used to capture bats for data collection. After they were captured, the bats were identified using Morphometry and the Shannon-Wiener index. Through another index, Margalef index, the bat diversity in the four cave habitats was expressed, with a discovery that there are many different species. Based on the Jaccard similarity index, bats were categorized again using cluster analysis and the unweighted pair-group method using arithmetic averages (UPGMA). A total of nine species across five families were identified. The diversity of existing species variety was also recognized by analyzing the composition of the four cavern inhabitants. The four cave ecosystems’ bat diversity was divided into three categories: moderate variety, low similarity, and high species diversity. Except for Cekelan 1 Cave and Gebyog Cave (P=0.015), other variations did not demonstrate a meaningful difference (P0.05). This demonstrates how different each ecosystem is. Therefore, they could be classified as potentially spoiled habitats, demanding additional conservation efforts.
Fundamental research questions in subterranean biology Mammola, Stefano; Amorim, Isabel R.; Bichuette, Maria E. ...
Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society,
December 2020, Volume:
95, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
ABSTRACT
Five decades ago, a landmark paper in Science titled The Cave Environment heralded caves as ideal natural experimental laboratories in which to develop and address general questions in ...geology, ecology, biogeography, and evolutionary biology. Although the ‘caves as laboratory’ paradigm has since been advocated by subterranean biologists, there are few examples of studies that successfully translated their results into general principles. The contemporary era of big data, modelling tools, and revolutionary advances in genetics and (meta)genomics provides an opportunity to revisit unresolved questions and challenges, as well as examine promising new avenues of research in subterranean biology. Accordingly, we have developed a roadmap to guide future research endeavours in subterranean biology by adapting a well‐established methodology of ‘horizon scanning’ to identify the highest priority research questions across six subject areas. Based on the expert opinion of 30 scientists from around the globe with complementary expertise and of different academic ages, we assembled an initial list of 258 fundamental questions concentrating on macroecology and microbial ecology, adaptation, evolution, and conservation. Subsequently, through online surveys, 130 subterranean biologists with various backgrounds assisted us in reducing our list to 50 top‐priority questions. These research questions are broad in scope and ready to be addressed in the next decade. We believe this exercise will stimulate research towards a deeper understanding of subterranean biology and foster hypothesis‐driven studies likely to resonate broadly from the traditional boundaries of this field.
ABSTRACT
Subterranean ecosystems are among the most widespread environments on Earth, yet we still have poor knowledge of their biodiversity. To raise awareness of subterranean ecosystems, the ...essential services they provide, and their unique conservation challenges, 2021 and 2022 were designated International Years of Caves and Karst. As these ecosystems have traditionally been overlooked in global conservation agendas and multilateral agreements, a quantitative assessment of solution‐based approaches to safeguard subterranean biota and associated habitats is timely. This assessment allows researchers and practitioners to understand the progress made and research needs in subterranean ecology and management. We conducted a systematic review of peer‐reviewed and grey literature focused on subterranean ecosystems globally (terrestrial, freshwater, and saltwater systems), to quantify the available evidence‐base for the effectiveness of conservation interventions. We selected 708 publications from the years 1964 to 2021 that discussed, recommended, or implemented 1,954 conservation interventions in subterranean ecosystems. We noted a steep increase in the number of studies from the 2000s while, surprisingly, the proportion of studies quantifying the impact of conservation interventions has steadily and significantly decreased in recent years. The effectiveness of 31% of conservation interventions has been tested statistically. We further highlight that 64% of the reported research occurred in the Palearctic and Nearctic biogeographic regions. Assessments of the effectiveness of conservation interventions were heavily biased towards indirect measures (monitoring and risk assessment), a limited sample of organisms (mostly arthropods and bats), and more accessible systems (terrestrial caves). Our results indicate that most conservation science in the field of subterranean biology does not apply a rigorous quantitative approach, resulting in sparse evidence for the effectiveness of interventions. This raises the important question of how to make conservation efforts more feasible to implement, cost‐effective, and long‐lasting. Although there is no single remedy, we propose a suite of potential solutions to focus our efforts better towards increasing statistical testing and stress the importance of standardising study reporting to facilitate meta‐analytical exercises. We also provide a database summarising the available literature, which will help to build quantitative knowledge about interventions likely to yield the greatest impacts depending upon the subterranean species and habitats of interest. We view this as a starting point to shift away from the widespread tendency of recommending conservation interventions based on anecdotal and expert‐based information rather than scientific evidence, without quantitatively testing their effectiveness.
Subterranean environments host a substantial amount of biodiversity, however assessing the distribution of species living underground is still extremely challenging. Environmental DNA (eDNA) ...metabarcoding is a powerful tool to estimate biodiversity in poorly known environments and has excellent performance for soil organisms. Here, we tested 1) whether eDNA metabarcoding from cave soils/sediments allows to successfully detect springtails (Hexapoda: Collembola) and insects (Hexapoda: Insecta); 2) whether eDNA mostly represents autochthonous (cave-dwelling) organisms or it also incorporates information from species living in surface environments; 3) whether eDNA detection probability changes across taxa with different ecology. Environmental DNA metabarcoding analyses detected a large number of Molecular Operational Taxonomic Units (MOTUs) for both insects and springtails. For springtails, detection probability was high, with a substantial proportion of hypogean species, suggesting that eDNA provides good information on the distribution of these organisms in caves. Conversely, for insects most of MOTUs represented taxa living outside caves, and the majority of them represented taxa/organisms living in freshwater environments (Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera). The eDNA of freshwater insects was particularly abundant in deep sectors of caves, far from the entrance. Furthermore, average detection probability of insects was significantly lower than the one of springtails. This suggests that cave soils/sediments act as “conveyer belts of biodiversity information”, possibly because percolating water lead to the accumulation of eDNA of organisms living in nearby areas. Cave soils hold a complex mix of autochthonous and allochthonous eDNA. eDNA provided unprecedented information on the understudied subterranean cave organisms; analyses of detection probability and occupancy can help teasing apart local eDNA from the eDNA representing spatially-integrated biodiversity for whole landscape.
Display omitted
•We tested the usefulness of eDNA from cave soil to study subterranean biodiversity.•A complex pattern of allochthonous and autochthonous eDNA has been observed.•Cave soils act as conveyer belts of biodiversity information.
With the nomination of the ‘Cave Animal of the Year’ the Society of German Cave and Karst Explorers calls public and authorities’ attention to the understudied biodiversity of subterranean ...ecosystems. Here the Cave Animal of the Year 2016, Amilenus aurantiacus (Simon, 1881), is presented. It is the first time that a harvestman has been chosen. Ist ecology, habitat and morphology are described. New records from Hesse, Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia are listed and discussed.
Four new species of the genus Bisetocreagris Ćurčić are described from caves in the provinces of Guizhou (B. chuanensis n. sp.), Sichuan (B. baozinensis n. sp., B. juanxuae n. sp., and Bisetocreagris ...sp.) and Chongqing (B. cavernarum n. sp.). On the basis of the trichobothrial pattern and the apparent fragility of the galea in this group, the following species are transferred to Bisetocreagris: Parobisium martiiMahnert, 2003, P. titaniumMahnert, 2003, P. scaurumMahnert, 2003, and Stenohya chinacavernicolaSchawaller, 1995.
Longevity in Cave Animals Lunghi, Enrico; Bilandžija, Helena
Frontiers in ecology and evolution,
05/2022, Volume:
10
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
An extraordinary longevity has been observed in some cave species, and this raised the hypothesis that a longer lifespan may be considered one of the characteristic traits of these animals. However, ...only a few cave species have been studied thus far, and a firm conclusion remains to be drawn. Here we review the available knowledge on the longevity of subterranean species, point out the limitations of previous studies, and provide suggestions for future studies to answer important questions regarding the longevity in cave animals, its adaptive value and the related promoting factors. We also argue that studying the longevity in cave animals will contribute to the field of aging, especially to understanding the evolution of this phenomenon.
PDF
