Setting up the laboratory invertebrate facility - good and bad practices

Many aspects of the biology of cave animals cannot be understood simply by in situ observations. This is especially true for comparative evolutionary and developmental studies. For example, for studying physiological and behavioral adaptations or the role of phenotypic plasticity in the evolution of adaptations, animals must be kept under controlled laboratory conditions. For this reason, we have established an animal facility in our laboratory where we plan to culture cave species from different taxonomic groups and their close surface relatives. The available literature to help us design the facility and care for the animals in the initial stages was sparse. Fortunately, many colleagues in cave biology contributed with advice and assistance. Here we report our findings to provide some guidelines for other researchers in similar endeavors. We will briefly discuss good and bad practices related to animal care - housing, water treatment, small terrarium design, different types of food, and breeding. We will also address general protocols necessary for keeping different species closely together - decontamination of equipment and tools and quarantine. To date, we have successfully established breeding colonies of four different cave/surface species pairs and several others have survived in our facility for many months, if not years, including planarians, crustaceans, and mollusks.