The fungal pathogen Geomyces destructans, which causes white-nose syndrome in bats, thrives in the cold and moist conditions found in caves where bats hibernate. To aidmanagers and researchers address this disease, an updated and accessible review of cave hibernacula and cave microclimates is presented. To maximize energy savings and reduce evaporative water loss during winter, most temperate v...

Species richness, abundance, distribution and similarity between cave invertebrate communities were compared among seven caves located in the Peruaçu River valley, north of Minas Gerais State, Brazil. Such comparisons aimed to determinate the degree of biological complexity in the sampled caves, calculated by the "Index of Biological Complexity in Caves", presented in this manuscript. The prese...

—The eastern pipistrelle (Pipistrellus subflavus) is considered one of the most common and widely distributed species of bats in eastern North America, but little published information exists on its natural history. During surveys of numerous small caves in northwest Arkansas, we documented use by eastern pipistrelles and recorded ambient temperature readings in all caves and at roost and hiber...

For large fishes, seagrass canopies typically provide a relatively flat habitat on seabeds, but seagrasses in the genus Posidonia can provide additional habitat complexity by forming organic-rich deposits known as mats. Erosional processes can scour channels through the mats, resulting in the formation of escarpments with caves. Here we report that reef fishes, such as groupers, inhabit the cav...

We describe a new species of the genus Endecous Saussure (1878), recorded at the Lapa do Cipó and Olhos d'Água caves, which are located in the Itacarambi municipality, Minas Gerais state, Eastern Brazil. Another species, E. aguassay Mews, 2008 was recordedin the surroundings of the caves. The genus Endecous corresponds to the most common cricket in Brazilian hypogean environments. In general, t...

The Earth's crust hosts a subsurface, dark, and oligotrophic biosphere that is poorly understood in terms of the energy supporting its biomass production and impact on food webs at the Earth's surface. Dark oligotrophic volcanic ecosystems (DOVEs) are good environments for investigations of life in the absence of sunlight as they are poor in organics, rich in chemical reactants and well known f...

Waterstrat et al. (JCKS (2010), 72 (2) 61–74) compared means of geometric measurements of sea and flank margin caves with the Student t-test and concluded that these different types of caves could be ‘‘statistically differentiated.’’ However, their use of the t-test is dependent on the data being normally distributed. The data that were analyzed, cave area to perimeter ratio, entrance-width to ...

Subsurface habitats harbor novel diversity that has received little attention until recently. Accessible subsurface habitats include lava caves around the world that often support extensive microbial mats on ceilings and walls in a range of colors. Little is known about lava cave microbial diversity and how these subsurface mats differ from microbial communities in overlying surface soils. To i...

We have developed a numerical model for assessing the lifetime of ice deposits in martian caves that are open to the atmosphere. Our model results and sensitivity tests indicate that cave ice would be stable over significant portions of the surface of Mars. Ice caves on Earth commonly occur in lava tubes, and Mars has been significantly resurfaced by volcanic activity during its history, includ...

Cyrtodactylus metropolis sp. nov. from Batu Caves massif, Selangor, Peninsular Malaysia is differentiated from all congeners by having a unique suite of morphological and color pattern characteristics. Remarkably, this species has been overlooked despite a plethora of field studies at Batu Caves from 1898 to the present and no specimens had ever been examined until now. As with all other limest...