How do you live at almost 2,000 meters depth? A team of Spanish and Portuguese researchers has found new species of arthropods that are capable of living in such extreme conditions. These subterranean animals inhabit the deepest cave in the world, near the Black Sea, and measure between 1 and 4 millimeters. Its discoverers publish the results in the journal Terrestrial Arthropod Reviews .
The new species, from the springtail group, have developed adaptations that allow them to cope with cave conditions: total absence of light and scarcity of food. “In response, none of the animals have eyes and lack pigmentation. In addition, one of the species has developed a chemoreceptor – a kind of chemical parabolic antenna – that allows it to move in such a complicated environment,” explains Enrique Baquero, one of the authors. In addition, they feed on fungi that grow on organic matter, without which life in this cave would not be possible.
The names of these deep- sea animals are Anurida stereoodorata, Deuteraphorura kruberaensis, Schaefferia profundísima, and Plutomurus ortobalaganensis . The latter was discovered at 1,980 meters below the surface, and it is the arthropod that lives at the highest underground level in the entire planet.
Although many expeditions had entered the Krubera-Voronya cave, whose depth exceeds two kilometers, the team of researchers, from the Universities of Navarra, Aveiro and the Museum of Natural Sciences of Valencia, has been the first to describe its fauna.
