“…However, the scarcity of modern genomic methods being employed in the study of anchialine ecosystems remains to be addressed. Although biospeleological studies that incorporate genetic methodologies have been previously conducted (Adams & Humphreys, 1993;Porter, 2007;Page et al, 2008;Juan et al, 2010), the use of modern sequencing technologies for the study of anchialine caves still lags behind their freshwater and terrestrial counterparts (e.g., Friedrich et al, 2011;Protas et al, 2011;Friedrich, 2013;Gross et al, 2013), with perhaps the exception of some localized studies of specific taxa (e.g., Meland & Willassen, 2007;Russ et al, 2010;Neiber et al, 2012;von Reumont et al, 2014). In this contribution we examine the current state of knowledge on anchialine cave ecology, biodiversity, and evolution and also discuss the advantages and possibilities that biospeleological investigations at the genomic level, or "speleogenomics", will provide to the understanding of these fascinating systems -with special emphasis in the areas of biodiversity, phylogeography, and molecular evolution.…”