Caves and rockshelters are found all over the world, and they have been frequently occupied throughout prehistory and early history. In many areas of Europe, some of these natural places are still used as sites of worship and as shelter against the elements. There is great variability in their use. Some appear to only have traces of short occupations, while others have thick cultural deposits, ...

The theory of island biogeography predicts the effects of habitat isolation and size on species richness, community assembly, and the persistence of species. Various studies showed that habitat conditions and the ecology of species are also of relevance in explaining community assembly. Geographically isolated habitats like caves with rather constant environmental conditions provide models to t...

The degradation of subterranean habitats is believed to represent a serious threat for the conservation of obligate subterranean dwellers (troglobites), many of which are short-range endemics. However, while the factors influencing cave biodiversity remain largely unknown, the influence of the surrounding landscape and patterns of subterranean connectivity of terrestrial troglobitic communities...

Cave geometric properties have been studied between 1958 and today as statistical or fractal objects. These studies have divulged some degree of order in such properties as the distribution of cave lengths in a region and the distribution of cave passage sizes, and exhibiting some degree of self-similarity, suggesting a fractal nature, or moderate departures from self-similarity, suggesting geo...

Marine caves are widely acknowledged for their unique biodiversity and constitute a typical feature of the Mediterranean coastline. Herein an attempt was made to evaluate the ecological significance of this particular ecosystem in the Mediterranean Sea, which is considered a biodiversity hotspot. This was accomplished by using Porifera, which dominate the rocky sublittoral substrata, as a refer...

Caves are not colonised by all taxa present in the surface species pool, due to absence of light and the tendency to food limitation when compared to surface communities. Under strong species sorting during colonisation and later by the restrictive environmental filter, traits that are not adaptive in subterranean habitats may be filtered out. We tested whether cave communities were assembled b...

This study examined the prevalence of behaviour problems exhibited by dogs within 4 weeks of acquisition from a rescue shelter in Northern Ireland. One thousand five hundred and forty-seven people who had purchased a dog from a rescue shelter in Northern Ireland were sent a postal questionnaire designed to collect information on the behaviours exhibited by their dog within the first month of ac...

It is estimated that 2.5 million cats enter animal shelters in the United States every year and as few as 20% leave the shelter alive. Of those adopted, the greatest risk to post-adoption human animal bond is unrealistic expectations set by the adopter. The ASPCAr’s Meet Your Matchr Feline-alityTM adoption program was developed to provide adopters with an accurate assessment of an adult cat’s f...