Calcite cave pool precipitates often display a variety of potential biosignatures from the macroscopic to the submicroscopic. A fossil cave pool in Cottonwood Cave, New Mexico, exhibits older stalactites and stalagmites that are completely coated in brown, laminated calcitic crust that extends down as pool fingers and u-loops. The pool fingers and u-loops are mainly micrite to clotted micrite, ...

Recent discoveries reveal that southern China's karsts hold the most diverse and morphologically modified subterranean trechine beetles in the world, albeit the first troglobitic blind beetle was only reported in the early 1990's. In total, 110 species belonging to 43 genera of cavernicolous trechines have hitherto been recorded from the karsts of southern China, including the following five ne...

The Still Bay, c. 76-72 ka, a prominent techno-tradition during the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa, has yielded innovative technologies, symbolic material culture, and shows evidence of expansion of hunting techniques and subsistence strategies. In this paper we present the results of the first systematic, taphonomic and palaeoenvironmental study of micromammals from the Still Bay levels a...

The Pax-6 gene encodes a transcription factor essential for eye development in a wide range of animal phyla. In order to elucidate a possible role of Pax-6 in the eye regression of a blind cave form of the freshwater fish Astyanax fasciatus (Characidae, Teleostei) we investigated the expression of Pax-6 in eyes and brains of different larval stages by in situ hybridization. Pattern, strength, a...

Wer e ve no record of the discussions which the founders must have had, when they \veJe ^ec*ding the terms of the lectureship, so we don't really know what these lectures aU(f SuPPose(i to accomplish. They were to be to a mixed medical and non-medical ref,renceV which rules out anything too rarefied, and the scope given in the terms of scierencf*s a wide one> namely "a subject connected with me...

The sulfide-rich Frasassi cave system hosts an aphotic, subsurface microbial ecosystem including extremely acidic (pH 0-1), viscous biofilms (snottites) hanging from the cave walls. We investigated the diversity and population structure of snottites from three locations in the cave system using full cycle rRNA methods and culturing. The snottites were composed primarily of bacteria related to A...

Emory Cave in west Texas, USA is one of the few natural roost sites used by the endangered Mexican long-nosed bat Leptonycteris nivalis in the United States. Despite concern over declines in population size, no reliable methods have been developed for censusing colonies of this species that are both accurate and minimize disruption to the colony. The objective of this study was to use non-invas...

Lagaropsylla signata (Wahlgren, 1903), previously known only from the Island of Java, Indonesia is redescribed and reported for the first time in Deer Cave, Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia (west coast of Borneo). Many were found clinging to the earwig Arixenia esau Jordan, 1909. A similar account of a phoretic flea (Lagaropsylla turba Smit, 1958) on the same species of cave-dwellin...

Archaeologists often argue whether Paleolithic works of art, cave paintings in particular, constitute reflections of the natural environment of humans at the time. They also debate the extent to which these paintings actually contain creative artistic expression, reflect the phenotypic variation of the surrounding environment, or focus on rare phenotypes. The famous paintings "The Dappled Horse...

The eyed surface form and eyeless cave form of the Mexican tetra Astyanax mexicanus experience stark differences in the daily periodicities of light, food and predation, factors which are likely to have a profound influence on metabolism. We measured the metabolic rate of Pachón cave and surface fish at a fixed swimming speed under light/dark and constant dark photoperiods. In constant darkness...