Down Deep
Spelunkers discover deepest terrestrial animal
In remote Abkhazia, near the Black Sea in the mountains of Western Caucasus, sits the world’s deepest cave: Krubera-Voronja, reaching more than 2 kilometers into the earth. In 2010, a research team descended into the depths, and now report that they emerged with the deepest terrestrial animal ever discovered – a primitive wingless and blind insect known as a springtail.
Abkhazia’s caves “have been explored during many speleological expeditions, especially in the last decade, but their biological components have received little interest,” a team including Rafael Jordana and Enrique Baquero of the University of Navarra in Spain report in Terrestrial Arthropod Reviews. In the summer of 2010, the Cave X research team set out to change that, wriggling into the deepest crevices to collect cave life.
They found at least five new species, including Plutomurus ortobalaganensis (pictured), which lived in total darkness “at the remarkable depth of 1,980 meters (more than one mile) below ground surface.”
The discovery of life “in such deep systems launches new insights about the way we look at life on Earth,” the team notes in a statement. “In total absence of light and extreme low food resources, cave-dwelling animals have unique adaptations to subterranean life. They lack body pigmentation, they have no eyes and have been developing morpho-physological strategies for survival at such depth, during millions of years. One of the species has, for example, a spectacular chemoreceptor,” a highly specialized chemical-sensing organ. – David Malakoff | February 22, 2012
Source: Jordana, R. et al. (2012). Reviews of the genera Schaefferia Absolon, 1900, Deuteraphorura Absolon, 1901, Plutomurus Yosii, 1956 and the Anurida Laboulbène, 1865 species group without eyes, with the description of four new species of cave springtails (Collembola) from Krubera-Voronya cave, Arabika Massif, Abkhazi. Terrestrial Arthropod Reviews volume 5, pp. 35-85.
Image courtesy the authors/Brill/Terrestrial Arthropod Reviews
