Unknown species may thrive in Antarctic caves

8 September 2017

Animals and plants may be living in warm caves under Antarctica's ice, according to a study.

Australian researchers said that Mount Erebus, an active volcano on Antarctica's Ross Island, is surrounded by caves hollowed out in the ice by steam.

Soil samples retrieved from the caves have revealed intriguing traces of DNA from mosses, algae and small animals.

The research has been published in the journal Polar Biology.

"It can be really warm inside the caves - up to 25C in some caves. You could wear a T-shirt in there and be pretty comfortable," said co-author Dr Ceridwen Fraser, from the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra.

"There's light near the cave mouths, and light filters deeper into some caves where the overlying ice is thin."

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New cryptic amphipod discovered in West Caucasus caves

Date: May 18, 2015

Source: Pensoft Publishers

Summary: Scientists have discovered a new species of typhlogammarid amphipod in the limestone karstic caves of Chjalta mountain range -- the southern foothills of the Greater Caucasus Range.

The new amphipod, which belongs to the genus Zenkevitchia, is the second species known from this group. This new addition to the genus is named Zenkevitchia yakovi after the famous Russian biospeleologist Prof Yakov Birstein.

Continued ...

First Evidence of Primates Regularly Sleeping in Caves

Dec. 4, 2013 — Scientists have discovered that some ring-tailed lemurs in Madagascar regularly retire to limestone chambers for their nightly snoozes, the first evidence of the consistent, daily use of the same caves and crevices for sleeping among the world's wild primates.

The ring-tailed lemurs may be opting to sleep in caves for several reasons, said University of Colorado Boulder anthropology Associate Professor Michelle Sauther, who led the study. While the cave-sleeping behavior is likely important because it provides safety from potential predators, it also can provide the primates with access to water and nutrients, help to regulate their body temperatures during cold or hot weather and provide refuge from encroaching human activities like deforestation, she said.

Continued

Killer Cave Lured Ancient Carnivores to Their Death

Tia Ghose, LiveScience Staff Writer 

Date: 01 May 2013 Time: 05:00 PM ET 

A cavern in Spain may have lured ancient carnivores to their deaths by offering the promise of food and water, new research suggests. 

The new study, published today (May 1) in the journal PLOS ONE, may explain how the carcasses of several carnivore species, including saber-toothed cats and "bear dogs," wound up in an underground cavern millions of years ago. 

"Only the carnivores were daring enough to enter," said study co-author M. Soledad Domingo, a paleontologist at the University of Michigan. "But they were unable to make their way out." 

Surprise discovery 

In 1991, miners drilling about 18.7 miles (30 kilometers) outside Madrid, Spain, uncovered animal bones and called in local paleontologists to excavate. They uncovered a series of underground caverns full of animal fossils — including the remains of red pandas, bear dogs and saber-toothed cats, as well as ancient animals related to modern elephants, giraffes, rhinoceroses and horses. To date, nearly 18,000 fossils have been recovered from the area. 

The so-called Cerro de los Batallones caves formed between 9 million and 10 million years ago in a process known as piping, where sediment falls into cracks or fissures in the surface, carving out hollow spaces in the soft, claylike Earth. Unlike other "pipes" formed in clay that quickly disappear, however, the holes stayed open longer because the area also contained a harder type of rock to buttress the burgeoning caves. 

Continued: http://www.livescience.com/29241-killer-cave-lured-carnivores.html

Bad news for America’s bats: Deadly fungus persists in caves

December 2012. Researchers have found that the organism that causes deadly white-nose syndrome persists in caves long after it has killed the bats in those caves. A study just published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology shows that the fungus can survive in soil for months, even years, after the bats have departed.

Caves and mines are reservoirs for the fungus
This is not good news for the bat population, says lead author Jeff Lorch, a research associate in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "We have found that caves and mines, which remain cool year-round, can serve as reservoirs for the fungus, so bats entering previously infected sites may contract white-nose syndrome from that environment. This represents an important and adverse transmission route."

"This certainly presents additional challenges," adds David Blehert, a microbiologist at the U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, who also led the study. "It's important that we have completed this foundational work that further implicates the environment in the ecology of this infectious disease. We can now collectively move forward to address this problem."

Fungus cannot survive in warm temperatures
The fungus cannot grow at warm temperatures, so scientists have long wondered how it survived over the summer. The new study sheds light on this mystery, proving that the fungus can survive over the summer in the cool soil of the caves and mines where bats hibernate.

The researchers analysed soil samples collected during the summer (when bats were absent) from 14 caves and mines in which bats had been observed with white-nose syndrome, and they found viable samples of the fungus, called Geomyces destructans.
Continued: http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/bat-fungus.html

New Beetle Species Found in Remote Arizona Cave

A newfound species of beetle has been discovered in remote caves in Arizona, boasting long antennae and slender legs with hairlike tufts.

The beetle, Eleodes wynnei, was named after its discoverer, Northern Arizona University researcher Jut Wynne.

Since 2005, Wynne and his colleagues have identified three new genera (the plural of genus, the taxonomic classification above species) and more than 20 new species of cave-dwelling arthropods in caves in the Grand Canyon region, according to a statement from Northern Arizona University.

Read on:  http://www.livescience.com/21927-new-cave-beetle-found.html

Divers discover new-to-science species

Divers discover new-to-science species in one of the deepest flooded caves in the world

In a recent diving expedition, Australian cave divers found three new-to-science species – a transparent amphipod, a worm, and a small snail – down in one of the world’s deepest underwater caves, near Nelson.

“It’s not easy to get inside the caves, and we want to know about the very specific life in them,” says NIWA expert Dr Graham Fenwick.

The discoveries were made in the Pearse Resurgence, a cave in the Mt Arthur Range, close to Nelson, where the divers were exploring underwater cave systems. They were collecting samples of stygofauna, which literally means animals from the River Styx, the mythical river that leads to the underworld.

There are 16 diveable caves in the world deeper than the Pearse Resurgence.
Only ten of these have been dived to depths greater than the current depth explored in the Pearse (194 metres freshwater). The divers were on site for 13 days, performing a total of 74 dives in the 6.5ºC water. The dives took place between 27 December 2010 and12 January 2011.

Worldwide, these aquifer studies are yielding rich troves of biodiversity. The importance of such stygofauna is twofold: they contribute to the health of the aquifer by biofiltration and, in turn, they may represent an important marker of the health of the water.

“It’s important to do an inventory of life in New Zealand, and in this case, it’s a pretty special type of environment, and we don’t have many limestone karst systems that are readily explored,” says Dr Fenwick.

A stygofauna biosurvey was performed in the cave using two techniques. Firstly, any invertebrates observed free swimming in the cave were captured by hand using a tube with a bulb on the end something like a turkey baster, “the stygoslurper as we call it,” says Dr Fenwick.

The second technique involved the deployment of baited fauna traps in the cave at depths from 5 -115 metres below the surface. Small plastic jars baited with a small shrimp were filled with nylon gauze and secured in various places in the cave, in crevices and amongst sediments.

One undescribed (new to science) species of amphipod crustacean dominated the stygofauna collected from the Pearse Resurgence. This species is completely colourless.

“It is six to eight millimetres long, the divers could see it crawling over rocks; it really is a beautiful animal. It belongs to the poorly known genus Paraleptamphopus, one of two genera within the New Zealand endemic Family Paraleptamphopidae,” says Dr Fenwick.

Continued:  http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1206/S00058/divers-discover-new-to-science-species.htm