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Thursday, January 19, 2006
Park caves yield 27 new animal species
SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, Calif. -- Spiders, centipedes and scorpionlike critters are among the 27 new animal species that biologists have discovered in the dark, damp caves coursing through two southern Sierra Nevada national parks.
"Not only are these animals new to science, but they're adapted to very specific environments -- some of them, to a single room in one cave," said Joel Despain, a cave specialist who helped explore 30 of the 238 known caves in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks.
While it's extremely rare to find new mammal or bird species on the surface, caves still hold an abundance of secrets. They are often difficult to reach and seldom explored, so the likelihood of finding an unknown creature in their folds is much greater, said Darrell Ubick, a cave biologist with the California Academy of Sciences.
"It's not necessarily unusual to find something new, but that doesn't make this less spectacular," he said. "Many people will be looking at these trying to find where they fit in the tree of life."
In the process of evolving to survive in complete darkness, millipedes, spiders, insects and organisms can develop characteristics that make them seem like ghostly, nightmarish versions of their relatives above.
For instance, a relative of the pill bug found in one cave is so translucent that its internal organs are clearly visible, particularly its long, bright yellow liver.
There is also a daddy long legs with jaws bigger than its body, and a tiny spider that has paled from its usual brown to a fluorescent orange.
Discovering so many unknown species was thrilling, said Jean Krejca, a consulting biologist with Austin, Texas-based Zara Environmental who helped lead the three-year exploration.
"You get the feeling you're Lewis and Clark, charting undiscovered territory," she said. "Caves are one of the last frontiers."
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