A cave inside Huntsville's city was discovered to contain a small, rare crayfish that was previously believed to be extinct. A team led by an assistant professor at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) has uncovered a small, rare crayfish that was believed to have been extinct for 30 years
A species of crayfish thought to be extinct was found in Shelta Cave, where Dr. Matthew L. Niemiller is snorkeling . Credit: Amata Hinkle
Dr. Cooper, a biologist and speleologist who was a member of the NSS, studied the aquatic life in Shelta Cave with a particular focus on crayfish for his dissertation work in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Shelta Cave’s aquatic ecosystem was particularly diverse then, with at least 12 cave-dependent species documented, including three species of cave crayfishes.
Even before the decline in the aquatic cave community, the Shelta Cave Crayfish was never common compared to the other two species, Southern Cave Crayfish and Alabama Cave Crayfish . “The groundwater level in Shelta Cave is the result of water that works its way naturally through the rock layers above the cave – called epikarst – from the surface,” says Dr. Niemiller. “However, urbanization in the area above the cave system may have altered rates at which water infiltrates into the cave and also increased rates of pollutants, such as pesticides and heavy metals entering the cave system.
“As I dove and got closer, I noticed that the chelae, or pincers, were quite thin and elongated compared to other crayfish we had seen in the cave,” he says. “I was fortunate to swoop up the crayfish with my net and returned to the bank.” The team had searched much of the area and didn’t see much aquatic life. As they started to make their way out the lake passage to return to the surface, Nate Sturm, a master’s student in biology at the University of Alabama who had accompanied the lab for the trip, noticed a small white crayfish in an area that the team had previously walked through.
“A couple other cave crayfishes are known from single cave systems in the United States. A challenge we face when trying to conserve such species is determining whether they really are known from a single cave system, or might they have slightly larger distributions but we are hampered by our ability to study life underground.”
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