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The study of subterranean life in general and cave life in particular has been given several names, most especially biospeleology and speleobiology. Historically, biospeleology came first, and signalled that biological study was part of speleology, the science of caves. Speleology itself has come to have several meanings beyond the science of caves, but as a discipline it has not fully developed. Speleobiology emphasizes the connection with biology, especially ecology and evolutionary biology. Biospeleology can be construed as the taxonomic and distributional aspects of the biology of caves while speleobiology can be construed as the aspects pertaining to general biological principles such as evolution.

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”.

This article aims to look at the constitutionality of Decree n. 6640/08, in which the relevancy criteria for ranking caves were established, and to verify its efficacy. Because it is a specific environment, the beings present there are highly specialized and therefore cannot survive in other environments. The method of research is the legal and theoretical with deductive reasoning and technical literature . It is concluded that the criteria are insufficient to the cave habitat protection.

This is a modest contribution to the history of science, respectively the history of the Romanian biospeleology. Biospeleology, the science created by Emile Racovitza in 1907, knew, after the death of the scientist a second period of great development. This is the thriving period which began 5o years ago, in 1956, with the reorganization of the Institute of Speleology up to 2005, including the retirement of the last biospeleologists belonging to that generation – all more or less distinguished researchers, known as such outside Romania

The rediscovery by the first author of the three letters received by him from A. Núñez Jiménez – at that time president of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba – throws new light on the events having lead to the organisation of the first biospeleological expedition to Cuba, this being at the same time the first scientific expedition abroad made by Romanian naturalists from the post-war period

The vertebrate and invertebrate fauna, environment and habitats of caves and disused mines in Nova Scotia and southern NewBrunswick are provisionally catalogued and described, based on field collections made over many years. The area was glaciatedand the subterranean fauna consists of non-troglobites all of which have arrived and colonised the caves during or following finalrecession of the Pleistocene glaciers. The statistical composition of the fauna at the higher taxonomic level is similar to that inOntario, but is less species rich and there are some notable ecological and other differences. Porcupine dung accumulations are animportant habitat in the region, constituting a cold-temperate analogue of the diverse guano habitats of southern and tropical caves.Parietal assemblages are, as in other cold temperate regions, an important component of the invertebrate fauna but here includespecies derived directly from dung communities: another parallel with tropical guano caves. An unanticipated finding is the numberof non-indigenous species now utilising local caves. These appear to have colonised unfilled ecological niches, suggesting thatpost-glacial recolonisation of the subterranean habitat in Nova Scotia has been relatively delayed. Finally the general and regionalsignificance of the subterranean fauna is briefly discussed.

Green Cave could be referred to as the extension part of the Kotumsar Cave of Kanger Valley National Park, but one can not traverse from one to another. In this study, we mapped the cave carefully and the environmental conditions have been checked carefully at each defined zone of this cave. Based on observed habitat and other behavioural characteristics the species identified from this cave are given their proper cavernicolous status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Bacteria present in cave often survive by modifying their metabolic pathway or other mechanism. Understanding these adopted bacteria and their survival strategy inside the cave is an important aspect of microbial ecology. Present study focuses on the bacterial community and geochemistry in five caves of Mizoram, Northeast India. The objective of this study was to explore the taxonomic composition and presumed functional diversity of cave sediment metagenomes using paired end Illumina sequencing using V3 region of 16S rRNA gene and bioinformatics pipeline. Results: Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, Verrucomicrobia and Acidobacteria were the major phyla in all the five cave sediment samples. Among the five caves the highest diversity is found in Lamsialpuk with a Shannon index 12.5 and the lowest in Bukpuk (Shannon index 8.22). In addition, imputed metagenomic approach was used to predict the functional role of microbial community in biogeochemical cycling in the cave environments. Functional module showed high representation of genes involved in Amino Acid Metabolism in (20.9%) and Carbohydrate Metabolism (20.4%) in the KEGG pathways. Genes responsible for carbon degradation, carbon fixation, methane metabolism, nitrification, nitrate reduction and ammonia assimilation were also predicted in the present study. Conclusion: The cave sediments of the biodiversity hotspot region possessing a oligotrophic environment harbours high phylogenetic diversity dominated by Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria. Among the geochemical factors, ferric oxide was correlated with increased microbial diversity. In-silico analysis detected genes involved in carbon, nitrogen, methane metabolism and complex metabolic pathways responsible for the survival of the bacterial community in nutrient limited cave environments. Present study with Paired end Illumina sequencing along with bioinformatics analysis revealed the essential ecological role of the cave bacterial communities. These results will be useful in documenting the biospeleology of this region and systematic understanding of bacterial communities in natural sediment environments as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three new species of the genus Plato from caves in the states of Pará and Minas Gerais, Brazil, are described. P. novalima sp. n., from Minas Gerais, is the first record of the genus in the southeastern region of Brazil. P. ferriferus sp. n. and P. striatus sp. n., from Carajás, Pará, north of Brazil, are also described. The former is an extremely abundant species, whereas the latter has only one known male specimen. Cuacuba gen. n. is proposed and represented by two new species, C. mariana sp. n. (type species) and C. morrodopilar sp. n., both from the state of Minas Gerais. Morphology of genitalia in Cuacuba gen. n. is similar to other Theridiosomatidae genera and is herein discussed. None of the proposed species presents troglomorphic adaptations. They are widespread, abundant inside caves in different and large karst areas, and each genus prefers different lithologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionUsing an integrative taxonomic approach, we investigated the morphological and molecular characters to identify the species of the genus Pseudosinella occurring in caves of the Western Carpathians and to clarify their phylogenetic relationships. Based on morphological characters, we hypothesized that Pseudosinella aggtelekiensis (Stach, 1929) and Pseudosinella paclti (Rusek, 1961) originated from different phyletic lineages.MethodsWe used the barcoding fragment of the mtDNA COI gene from 87 individuals from 16 caves to reconstruct the phylogenetic history of the genus Pseudosinella.ResultsThe molecular phylogenetic tree revealed two distinct species groups with allopatric distributions. The first group consisted of P. aggtelekiensis populations from the Slovak Karst and three undescribed species from fragmented and isolated karst areas in southeastern Slovakia. The second group, P. paclti populations in the Central Western Carpathians, was merged. This group included Pseudosinellamuranensis, a new species taxonomically described in this work. It is characterized by highly developed troglomorphic features and is restricted to a small karst area, the Muranska planina Plateau. The phylogeny of the genus Pseudosinella from the caves of the Western Carpathians revealed a Miocene diversification. According to molecular calibration, the two distinct Pseudosinella lineages were separated in the Middle Miocene, about 14.51 Mya, followed by further diversification in the P. paclti lineage 10.89 Mya and in the P. aggtelekiensis lineage 11.14 Mya.DiscussionThis phylogeny is consistent with the uplift of Triassic limestones during the early formation of the Western Carpathians in the Paratethys region and the initial development of caves during this period. The study provides further important evidence that the Western Carpathians played a significant role as an independent speciation center of the obligate cave fauna in Europe.

In the Lessini Mountains, the southernmost prealpine area in the Veneto region, thousands of caves are found, many of which have been extensively studied from the biological point of view. Numerous studies have been carried out on taxonomic and biogeographic aspects over the last hundred years. Two caves, in particular, have been found to be extremely rich in species adapted to life in subterranean environments. These are the Arena Cave in the Monti Lessini Veronesi and the Buso della Rana cave system in the Monti Lessini Vicentini. The two caves have extremely different development: Arena Cave is about 100 meters in length, and the Buso della Rana-Pisatela cave system is more than 37 km in length. Despite this huge difference in size, they both have the highest number of subterranean dwelling species in northern Italy (16 troglobionts and 8 stygobionts in Arena Cave, and 7 troglobionts and 11 stygobionts in the Buso della Rana-Pisatela cave system).