The Corona lava tube, Lanzarote: geology, habitat diversity and biogeography
- PDF / 1,587,749 Bytes
- 13 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 31 Downloads / 164 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
The Corona lava tube, Lanzarote: geology, habitat diversity and biogeography Horst Wilkens & Thomas M. Iliffe & Pedro Oromí & Alejandro Martínez & Terence N. Tysall & Stefan Koenemann
Received: 9 April 2009 / Revised: 6 July 2009 / Accepted: 9 July 2009 / Published online: 12 August 2009 # Senckenberg, Gesellschaft für Naturforschung and Springer 2009
Abstract The Corona lava tube on the Canarian island of Lanzarote is a unique subterranean ecosystem comprising both dry and submerged cave sections with a total length of almost 8 km. Here, we present the results of a diving exploration of the lava tube that took place from 11 to 25 March 2008. Environmental characteristics are given for ecologically disparate sections of the cave, including the Cueva de los Lagos, the Jameos del Agua, and the Túnel
This article is part of a special issue of Marine Biodiversity entitled “The Atlántida 2008 Cave Diving Expedition”. H. Wilkens (*) Biozentrum Grindel und Zoologisches Museum, Universität Hamburg, M-L-King-Platz 3, 20146 Hamburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] T. M. Iliffe : T. N. Tysall Department of Marine Biology, Texas A&M University at Galveston, Galveston, TX 77553-1675, USA P. Oromí Departamento de Biología Animal, Universidad de La Laguna, 38206 La Laguna Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain A. Martínez Marine Biological Laboratory, Department of Biosciences, University of Copenhagen, Strandpromenaden 5, 3000 Helsingør, Denmark S. Koenemann Institute for Animal Ecology and Cell Biology, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Bünteweg 17d, 30559 Hannover, Germany
de la Atlántida. Moreover, we compare various habitats within the lava tube, and discuss the origin of the diverse hypogean fauna, including new species of remipede crustaceans and polychaete worms discovered during the expedition. Keywords Anchialine caves . Sub-seafloor caves . Marine biodiversity . Hypogean fauna . Mesozoic distributions
Introduction The Corona lava tube on Lanzarote, Canary Islands is the 15th longest lava tube in the world at 6,100 m (Gulden 2009), as well as the longest underwater cave of this type, extending to 1,618 m (Isler 1987). The first scientific reference to the cave was by the Austrian taxonomist Koelbel (1892) in his description of the galatheid crab Munidopsis polymorpha, probably the best-known endemic species from the lava tube. A preliminary ecological survey of the Jameos del Agua, a tidal lagoon within the lava tube, was performed by Harms (1921), who mainly focused on the histology of the depigmented and reduced eyes of M. polymorpha. Subsequent early studies on the cave fauna were carried out by Calman (1904, 1932) and Fage and Monod (1936). In the early 1970s, a new phase of intensive studies started with emphasis on the biology and behavior of M. polymorpha and the ecology of the Jameos del Agua (Wilkens and Parzefall 1974; Parzefall and Wilkens 1975; Wilkens et al. 1990). In connection with these investigations, several eyeless and depigmented new species of amphipods, polycha
Data Loading...
