Abstract
Semiarid regions experience conspicuous seasonal variations, especially related to precipitation. Caves in these areas can be exceptions since they are less affected by dry seasons. In the north of the Brazilian semiarid, there are structurally heterogeneous karst areas with significant speleological potential and several anthropogenic impacts, with a neglected subterranean fauna. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the influence of caves and external environmental features on the species richness and composition of cave invertebrates of this region. We expected that the caves would have high species richness and endemism, high dissimilarity among spatially discontinuous regions, and caves with water or guano would have greater overall richness and troglobitic species richness than those without water or guano. We collected invertebrates in 40 caves and recorded 416 species from 145 families and 45 orders (38.28 ± 13.88 spp./cave). We identified 57 species with troglomorphic traits, most having narrow distributions, including phylogenetic and/or geographic (oceanic) relicts, suggesting a lengthy and complex evolutionary history. In addition to the faunal dissimilarity among hydrographic basins and caves with or without water, our data indicate the variety of resources, the native vegetation surrounding the caves, the area, and the number of entrances as relevant variables of species composition and richness variation. Caves with water or guano had the highest richness of troglobites. The study area is unique in South America for having such a high concentration of troglobites associated with the presence of karstic aquifers and paleoclimatic changes (including oceanic transgressions and regressions), thus deserving emergency conservation actions.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Biológicas (UFRN), Laboratório de Ecologia e Conservação da Biodiversidade (UFRN), Centro de Estudos em Biologia Subterrânea (CEBS/UFLA) and Centro Nacional de Pesquisa e Conservação de Cavernas (ICMBio/CECAV) for providing infrastructure for the development of the study; to Darcy, Iatagan, Uilson and Geilson for helping with the collections; to colleagues of CEBS/UFLA and LECB/UFRN for helping with the material analysis and invertebrate identification: Gindomar, Heitor, Daniel, Uirandé, Victor, Reberth, Márdyla, Leopoldo, Thais, Maysa, Dani and Marcela. We also thank Dr. Mauro Pichorim and Dr. Enrico Bernard for contributions to the text, Tiago Castro Silva for the support in the use of data from the MapBiomas Project, and to Flávia Petean and Erika Taylor for English review. The collection permit no. 21458 was granted by Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade (ICMBio).
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Funding was provided by the Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa (CNPq), process no 477712/2006-1, and to R.L.F. (CNPq grant nr. 308334/2018-3).
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de M. Bento, D., Souza-Silva, M., Vasconcellos, A. et al. Subterranean “oasis” in the Brazilian semiarid region: neglected sources of biodiversity. Biodivers Conserv 30, 3837–3857 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-021-02277-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-021-02277-6