Punctured extinct cave bear femora were misidentified in southeastern Europe (Hungary/Slovenia) as 'Palaeolithic bone flutes' and the 'oldest Neanderthal instruments'. These are not instruments, nor human made, but products of the most important cave bear scavengers of Europe, hyenas. Late Middle to Late Pleistocene (Mousterian to Gravettian) Ice Age spotted hyenas of Europe occupied mainly cav...

Cave cricket abundance is used as an indicator of integrity of cave ecosystems. One means of monitoring cave cricket abundance is counting crickets as they emerge from cave entrances for two hours after sunset. The influence of cloud cover, relative humidity, and surface temperature on counts is unknown and there might be few cave crickets that emerge during the first hour of the survey. Using ...

[1] Brush removal is commonly conducted to increase water availability in arid areas, such as central Texas, where water resources are stressed. The effectiveness of brush clearing to enhance recharge, however, remains uncertain as numerous studies have yielded contradictory results. This study assesses the effects of brush clearing on recharge to a cave at Natural Bridge Caverns, central Texas...

background: the best-known dangerous spiders belong to the six genera. the genus loxosceles or violin spiders are well known for their ability to cause skin necrosis or loxoscelism. all loxosceles species have medical im­portance due to their necrotizing venom. the present article reports the occurrence of l. rufescens in charkhab cave, south of iran (larestan). methods: the specimens were coll...

The subterranean environment of Christmas Island is diverse and includes freshwater, marine, anchialine, and terrestrial habitats. The cave fauna comprises swiftlets, and a diverse assemblage of invertebrates, both terrestrial and aquatic, which includes a number of rare and endemic species of high conservation significance. At least twelve species are probably restricted to subterranean habita...

Cave animals, compared to surface-dwelling relatives, tend to have reduced eyes and pigment, longer appendages, and enhanced mechanosensory structures. Pressing questions include how certain cave-related traits are gained and lost, and if they originate through the same or different genetic programs in independent lineages. An excellent system for exploring these questions is the isopod, Asellu...

In this paper, necessary and sufficient conditions are stated for the Craig-Sakamoto equation det(I − sA − tB) = det(I − sA)det(I − tB) to hold for all scalars s, t ∈ C. Moreover, spectral properties for matrices A and B that satisfy this equation are investigated.

The causes of the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions are still enigmatic. Although the fossil record can provide approximations for when a species went extinct, the timing of its disappearance alone cannot resolve the causes and mode of the decline preceding its extinction. However, ancient DNA analyses can reveal population size changes over time and narrow down potential causes of extinc...

Cave bears (Ursus spelaeus) existed in Europe and western Asia until the end of the last glaciation some 10,000 years ago. To investigate the genetic diversity, population history, and relationship among different cave bear populations, we have determined mitochondrial DNA sequences from 12 cave bears that range in age from about 26,500 to at least 49,000 years and originate from nine caves. Th...

Seasonality impacts species distributions through changes of the environmental conditions that affect the presence of individuals at a given place. Although the dynamics of cave microclimates are well known, only a few studies have evaluated the effects of such dynamics on non-strictly cave species. Here we assessed if species exploiting subterranean environments show changes in habitat occupat...