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What are small black insects flying over pond?
On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:43:23 CST, kthirtya wrote:
Galen, did you ever come across 'cave insects', adapted to living in the dark? Or other cave critters like that - such as fish in underground pools (in an attempt to keep this in the watery topic area). k :-) Many of them have lost not only eyesight, but also pigmentation. Some of them have become blind, albino cousins of their same kind that live on the surface. Others are largely unchanged from those who dwell outside a cave. There are blind, albino fish, crayfish, spiders, centipedes, just oodles of things running around in caves. I don't want to make it sound like a garden environment, it isn't. There isn't much in the way of nutrients in a cave per se, those that are there have to be washed in by water or carried into the cave. There are beetles that live their whole lives in caves, but survive on the droppings of bats, which must exit the cave to find their nutrition. It has been discovered, somewhat recently, that there are several kinds of bacteria that seem to be capable of transforming elements (in this case, sulphur) directly into energy, without requiring any external light input. (Well, I think it is pretty remarkable, anyway.) These bacteria may have played a greater role in cave development than water, in some cases. There are also some examples of food chains based on these same bacteria, but I digress. At first glance, a cave looks like a sterile environment. There is no light whatsoever, there is nothing growing, just water and rocks and mud. Surely nothing could survive there. But then there are speleobiologists and several many universities giving advanced degrees in speleobiology (speleo meaning "cave" in Greek) so there must be something to study. -- Galen Hekhuis "Mistakes were made" |
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