No need to hide in caves: shelter-seeking behavior of surface and cave ecomorphs of Asellus aquaticus (Isopoda: Crustacea).

Shelter-seeking is a vital behavior for stress reduction and survival in a range of animals. It comes at the cost of reduced foraging, mate finding, dispersal and territoriality, and is expected to reflect the trade-off between fitness costs and benefits. One way to test this hypothesis is to compare shelter-seeking behavior in surface habitats and in caves where external threat factors are largely reduced.

Phylogenetic relationships of the Balkan Moitessieriidae (Caenogastropoda: Truncatelloidea).

The family Moitessieriidae includes minute dioecious gastropods exclusively inhabiting subterranean waters, including thermal ones. Only empty shells were collected in most species, the vast majority of them are described from their gross shell morphology alone. Several visits to a site are usually required to obtain at least some living individuals.

Comparative study of acetylcholinesterase and glutathione S-transferase activities of closely related cave and surface Asellus aquaticus (Isopoda: Crustacea).

The freshwater isopod crustacean Asellus aquaticus has recently been developed as an emerging invertebrate cave model for studying evolutionary and developmental biology. Mostly morphological and genetic differences between cave and surface A. aquaticus populations have been described up to now, while scarce data are available on other aspects, including physiology.

The first Turcolana Argano & Pesce, 1980 (Isopoda: Cirolanidae) from the Greek mainland.

Turcolana Argano & Pesce, 1980 is the isopod genus occurring in freshwater and brackish groundwater environments around the eastern Mediterranean. In this study, a revised diagnosis of the genus, an updated map of species distribution and a key to species are presented. The first cave dwelling species is described from the Melissotrypa Cave in central Greece, a highly troglomorphic Turcolana lepturoides sp.

Parallels between two geographically and ecologically disparate cave invasions by the same species, Asellus aquaticus (Isopoda, Crustacea).

Caves are long-known examples of evolutionary replications where similar morphologies (troglomorphies) evolve independently as the result of strong natural selection of the extreme environment. Recently, this paradigm has been challenged based on observations that troglomorphies are inconsistent across taxa and different subterranean habitats. We investigated the degree of replicated phenotypic change in two independent cave invasions by the freshwater isopod Asellus aquaticus; the first in a sulphidic aquifer in Romania, the second in a sinking river in the Dinaric Karst in Slovenia.