In light of recent alarming trends in human population growth, climate change, and other environmental modifications, a “Warning to humanity” manifesto was published in BioScience in 2017. This call reiterated most of the ideas originally expressed by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 1992, including the fear that we are “pushing Earth's ecosystems beyond their capacities to support the web of life.” As subterranean biologists, we take this opportunity to emphasize the global importance and the conservation challenges associated with subterranean ecosystems. They likely represent the most widespread nonmarine environments on Earth, but specialized subterranean organisms remain among the least documented and studied. Largely overlooked in conservation policies, subterranean habitats play a critical role in the function of the web of life and provide important ecosystem services. We highlight the main threats to subterranean ecosystems and propose a set of effective actions to protect this globally important natural heritage.

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.

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The increasing occurrence of cyanobacterial blooms in freshwaters is of great concern due to the ability of many cyanobacteria to produce cyanotoxins. In the present work, the eutrophied Vela Lake (Central Portugal), used for recreational purposes and as a water source for agriculture, was monitored every fortnight between 2000 and 2001. Phytoplankton diversity and densities were measured and correlated to environmental parameters. A seasonal phytoplanktonic succession was observed and it was mainly correlated with conductivity, temperature, total suspended solids and nutrients availability (particularly phosphorus). Diatoms were dominant during winter months (inferior temperatures and higher nutrients availability) followed by green algae in early spring and then cyanobacteria from late spring until early autumn (less nutrient availability and higher temperatures). A massive cyanobacterial bloom of Aphanizomenon flos-aquae occurred early in May 2001 and was preceded by the lowest nitrogen levels measured in the water during all the study period. At the time of this bloom senescence, dissolved oxygen was severely depleted and a massive death of ichthyofauna was recorded. A Microcystis aeruginosa bloom was also detected in July 2001 and it occurred following a rapid decrease in abundance of green algae and diatoms. By considering not only the environmental parameters but also the occurrence of cyanobacterial blooms as explanatory variables in a canonical correspondence analysis, the variance explained for the phytoplanktonic assemblage during the study period was increased in about 7% achieving a total of 61.0%, indicating a correlation that may be due to the known competitive advantage and/or allelopathy of the bloom-forming cyanobacteria towards microalgae.

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The genera Diplopodomyces and Troglomyces (Laboulbeniales, Ascomycota) parasitizing millipedes (Diplopoda) are reviewed. We describe four new species: D. lusitanipodos parasitic on Lusitanipus from Portugal and on Cyphocallipus from Spain, D. veneris on Lusitanipus from Portugal, T. botryandrus on Leptoiulus from Italy and T. rossii on Ophyiulus, Leptoiulus and Typhloiulus from Italy. Diplopodomyces veneris is a dimorphic species, with different morphotypes growing on the male copulatory organs and on the surroundings of the female gonopore respectively. The type species of both genera also have been studied, their descriptions are revised and a neotype for T. manfrediae is designated. New records from Italy are given for D. callipodos and T. manfrediae.

Nine new species of the genus Rickia parasitizing Diplopoda are described: R. appendicifera from Iran on Chiraziulus, R. candelabriformis from Australia and New Zealand on several Spirostreptida, R. galatheae from New Zealand on Eumastigonus, R. gigas from Tanzania on ‘Spirostreptus’ and Archispirostreptus, R. lophophora from Tanzania on some genera of Spirostreptidae, R. obelostrepti from Tanzania on Obelostreptus, R. odontopygiidarum from Tanzania on Odontopygidae, R. platessa from Singapore and Thailand on Pachybolidae, and R. rhynchophora from Australia on Trigoniulus.  This nearly triples the previously known number of species of Rickia species on millipedes; all 14 species are treated in this study with photomicrographs, additional observations on previously described taxa and comments. A key to these species is also provided. The Laboulbeniales species were found on millipede specimens preserved mostly at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, from samples collected between 1916 to the present.