Hello everyone!
I pleased to invite you to the official site of Central Asian Karstic-Speleological commission ("Kaspeko")
There, we regularly publish reports about our expeditions, articles and reports on speleotopics, lecture course for instructors, photos etc. ...
Dear Colleagues, This is to draw your attention to several recent publications added to KarstBase, relevant to hypogenic karst/speleogenesis: Corrosion of limestone tablets in sulfidic ground-water: measurements and speleogenetic implications Galdenzi,
A recent publication of Spanish researchers describes the biology of Krubera Cave, including the deepest terrestrial animal ever found:
Jordana, Rafael; Baquero, Enrique; Reboleira, Sofía and Sendra, Alberto. ...
Exhibition dedicated to caves is taking place in the Vienna Natural History Museum
The exhibition at the Natural History Museum presents the surprising variety of caves and cave formations such as stalactites and various crystals. ...
Did you know?
That surface runoff is that part of runoff traveling over the ground surface and through channels [16].?
An account of the researches carried out on the algae living in the caves of Hungary is given. The results of the investigations concerning the algal flora of the Baradla, Peace, Abaliget, Pàlvòlgy, Kòlyuk caves are enumerated. Theories about the possible energy source utilized by these algae living in the complete darkness of caves such as radiation, symbiosis, chemosynthesis or auxothrophy are discussed. The question of the settling of algae into the caves is debated.
Because of the ease of its exploration, the Punchbowl-Signature system (Map reference 677587, Army 1/50,000 Sheet 8627-IV, Goodradigbee) is the most frequently visited of the Wee Jasper caves though it contains even less calcite decoration than does Dip Cave. On the other hand, the system is of considerable scientific interest, both biological and geomorphological. Biologically the interest centres on the long-term investigations of the colony of Bentwing Bats (Miniopterus schreibersii blepotis), initiated by G. Dunnet, sustained and enlarged by D. Purchase. On the geomorphological side, though it is now a dry inactive system like Dip Cave, it possesses a morphology which reveals much of the history of its excavation by a former underground river and so contrasts with its neighbour in the same geological formation only a mile away where there are many difficulties in the way of interpretation of its evolution (Jennings, 1963a).
Bats, familiar to speleologists, play an important part in animal ecology in caves. Indirectly by their guano, they provide a source of food for numerous cave-dwelling animals and directly, by their own more or less constant presence. 26 species of bats are known from Switzerland, 15 of which occur in caves. Miniopterus schreibersi is considered the only true cave-dweller. The exact distribution of the rare species, including those occurring outside caves, is found in the text and is also indicated on the accompanying maps.
Three caves of the central part of the Bulgarian Balkan (Stara planina, close to the village of Etropolé) host cavernicolous beetles of the subfamily Bathysciinae (family of Catopidae) that constitute a new genus of the Brachyscapes group. In this paper the diagnosis of this new troglobe genus together with the description of the type species Balcanobius etropolensis, gen.n., sp.n. are given. The new genus is then inserted in the dichotomic table as defined by R. Jeannel, placing it close to the other two Yugoslavian genus Parapropus and Spelaeodromus.
The cavernicole asellid Asellus cavaticus Leydig has been reared in our laboratory for more than twenty months, permitting us to give some data on the sexual cycle of this species. Females provided with brood pouches seem to be more numerous in the spring, as is the case with the subterranean amphipod Niphargus virei Chevreux. The average length of the incubation period seems much shorter than that of other troglobitic species such as Niphargus virei Chevreux or Caecosphaeroma burgundum Dollfus, so that the life cycle of our species is nearer to that of epigean Asellus. The number of young per brood appears to be related to the length of the female, as is suggested by our observations on 52 ovigerous females, but there must be other factors which influence this quantity. The comparison between our observations and those made on the North American cavernicole Asellus tridentatus Hungerford shows that the sexual biology of these two species is apparently quite different.
The clustering areas of bent-winged bats in limestone caves are frequently stained and etched. This staining is very intense, and covers large areas at breeding caves present in Palaeozoic limestones. Erosion of limestone is very conspicuous in these caves. Staining is not intense at breeding caves in Tertiary limestones, but a combination of chemical and mechanical erosion may, in part, account for the depth of dome pits in which the bats cluster. Certain caves that are characterised by extensive guano deposits and by conspicuously eroded and/or stained limestone, but which are currently without large colonies of bats, may represent ancestral breeding caves.
