Synopsis Cave-adapted animals are characterized by extreme reduction or complete absence of eyes, reflecting their lack of exposure to daylight. Given the overall constancy of abiotic variables in the cave environment, one would also expect the relaxation and eventual loss of circadian rhythms, and with it, the regressive evolution of the underlying genetic biological clock. Remarkably, however...

Cave-dwelling animals exhibit remarkable convergence in multiple cave-related traits, yet the genetic mechanisms responsible for the evolution and integration of many such traits remain unclear. Astyanax mexicanus is a model cave-dwelling fish with sighted surface-dwelling (surface fish) and blind cave-dwelling (cavefish) forms. Using a genetic cross between these morphs, we discovered signific...

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 colle...

Renewed mammal survey efforts in high elevation forests and subalpine habitats in the Kaijende Highlands, undertaken in July 2008, recorded 17 species of mammals (9 marsupials, 7 rodents, 1 bat) primarily on the basis of small mammal trapping, mistnetting, and examination of bones and teeth recovered from caves. At least two of these species, a bandicoot (Microperoryctes) and a pygmy possum (Ce...

One of the most challenging fauna to study in situ is the obligate cave fauna because of the difficulty of sampling. Cave-limited species display patchy and restricted distributions, but it is often unclear whether the observed distribution is a sampling artifact or a true restriction in range. Further, the drivers of the distribution could be local environmental conditions, such as cave humidi...

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...

Gasarch, Golub, and Srinivasan studied the Robin Hood game in the case of random, memoryless strategies. In this brief note we extend their main result to the case of bounded memory, and clarify several questions raised by them. 1. The Robin Hood game The Robin Hood game RH(r, s, A) is defined for functions r, s : N → N such that 1 ≤ r(i) < s(i) for each i, and for a set A, as follows: (1) On d...

A remarkable aphaenopsian beetle, a sympatric species of Qianotrechus tenuicollis Uéno, 2000, was newly discovered in Cave Mahuang Dong of Shuanghe Dong cave system, the longest cave system of China in Suiyang County, northern Guizhou Province. To categorize this striking but still unknown species, a new genus and species are proposed: Shuangheaphaenops elegansgen. n., sp. n. Relationships of S...

The prehistory of the Mammoth Cave area has been of interest to archeologists for more than a century because of the remarkable preservation in the dry cave environment. Beginning with the antiquarian search for mummified bodies in the early nineteenth century up to the most modern scientific research, Mammoth Cave has revealed important information about the Native Americans who lived near and...

Despite considerable work on other trace elements, the incorporation of dissolved silicon from cave waters into speleothems has not been previously investigated. In this study, the controls on dissolved Si in cave waters and on adsorbed Si in resulting speleothems are therefore investigated. Bedrock (dolomite), soil water, dripping water, and cave carbonates were retrieved from Heshang Cave sit...