The world's deepest subterranean community - Krubera-Voronja Cave (Western Caucasus)

A new Eukoenenia species from the Caucasus bridges a gap in the known distribution of palpigrades (Arachnida: Palpigradi)

“…The subterranean fauna is probably likewise rich, especially in the karstic massifs of the Western Caucasus (Sendra & Reboleira 2012), as indicated by the current increase in the number of cave-dwelling species in certain arthropod groups such as arrhopalitid collembolans (Vargovitsh 2012(Vargovitsh , 2013. According to Culver et al (2006), habitat availability (inferred from the density of caves) and long-term productivity (measured by temperature and rainfall) best predict density of troglobiont species at a landscape scale.…”

“…Prospection there would probably uncover autochthonous species, as recently happened in West Australia (first indigenous palpigrade species reported by Barranco & Harvey 2008) or Brazil (raise in species number from two to ten: Souza & Ferreira 2013). In the Palearctic, the most obvious gap in known palpigrade distribution extends over Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, including the relatively well-explored Western Caucasus, where a rich subterranean fauna has been discovered as of the 1930s (Sendra & Reboleira 2012). The present paper introduces a new Eukoenenia species from a cave in the territory of Abkhazia and demonstrates that the space between Romania and India was not a gap in palpigrade distribution, but merely a gap in palpigrade sampling.…”

Millipedes (Diplopoda) from Caves of Portugal

“…Millipedes play an important role in the decomposition of organic matter, and several species around the world have adapted to subterranean life, being found from cave entrances to almost 2000 meters depth (Culver and Shear, 2012;Golovatch and Kime, 2009;Sendra and Reboleira, 2012). Although the millipede faunas of many European countries are relatively well studied, this is not true of Portugal.…”

The deepest finding of an olm (Proteus anguinus): Zagorska peć, Ogulin, Croatia

“…Consequently, even basic information about the vertical distribution of the olm in subterranean caves is still lacking. While there is some research of vertical distribution of cave invertebrates that live at great depths (Sendra & Reboleira 2012), there are no data about the vertical distribution of vertebrates in the phreatic environment (Sendra & Reboleira 2012). In Slovenia, the olm was found in Divje jezero (Idrija) at a depth of approximately 50 m (Krivic et al 1983).…”