The hyporheic zone (HZ), as the connecting ecotone between surface- and groundwater, is functionally part of both fluvial and groundwater ecosystems. Its hydrological, chemical, biological and metabolic features are specific of this zone, not belonging truly neither to surface- nor to groundwater. Exchanges of water, nutrients, and organic matter occur in response to variations in discharge and...

A new epigean asellid isopod, Caecidotea contrerasbalderasi sp. nov. is described from Nayarit, northwestern Mexico. This species has morphological characters belonging to two different types of environments, both depigmentation and anophthalmia, indicators organisms adapted live in constant darkness as cavernicolous species. Despite showing characteristics hypogean species, the taxon does not ...

Ecological performance of animals depends on physiological and biochemical processes that are adjusted to the environment. The responses hypoxia or anoxia have been frequently studied in subterranean aquatic organisms order find potential adaptations restrict oxygen conditions occurring underground habitats. However, some previous studies compared phylogenetic distant epigean hypogean species p...

INTRODUCTION During an investigation of the causes of pigment lack in cave Crustacea, it seemed desirable to study the kind of pigmentation in related above-ground (epigean) forms. The colour of three species of Isopoda was found to be due to a melanin-like pigment in branched cells (Baldwin & Beatty, 1941). Two plant carotenoid pigments— cryptoxanthine and /J-carotene—were present throughout t...