Habitat-Based Conservation of Anchialine Cave Crustaceans

Résumé fourni par la source

Abstract Anchialine ecology is a relatively new endeavor, dating to the early 1980s with the application of technical cave diving methodology to scientific investigations of underwater cave ecosystems. The first major discoveries involved the new class Remipedia from blue holes in the Bahamas and the new order Mictacea from Bermuda caves. Anchialine stygobiont crustaceans include representatives from the Copepoda, Ostracoda, Procarididea, Caridea, Anomura, Isopoda, Amphipoda, Ingolfiellida, Thermosbaenacea, Tanaidacea, Mictacea, Bochusacea, Cumacea, Stygiomysida, Mysida, and Remipedia. Common threats to anchialine habitats are construction and mining activities, sewage or wastewater disposal, solid waste dumps, overpumping of groundwater, disturbance of salinity-stratified water layers by divers, invasive species, and climate change. Principal conservation initiatives involve the creation of parks and nature reserves, enacting of laws and regulations to protect anchialine species and associated caves, education of the public on the importance of cave habitats, and addition of cave organisms to endangered species lists. This chapter focuses on strategies to protect threatened subterranean habitats with unique endemic crustacean populations. Case studies from Bermuda, Lanzarote (Canary Islands), Quintana Roo (Mexico), and Western Australia were reviewed. The occurrence of exceptional crustacean assemblages with valuable ecological function has led to the classification and protection of valuable habitats as management units and reconition of keynote crustacean species including the mictacean Mictocaris halope (Bermuda), squat lobster Munidopsis polymorpha (Lanzarote), thermosbaenacean Halosbaena tulki (Western Australia), and remipedes Kumonga exleyi (Western Australia), Xibalbanus tulumensis (Yucatán), and Morlockia ondinae (Lanzarote). Adequate protection of anchialine crustaceans is essential in maintaining unique components of crustacean biodiversity.

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