Berry cave salamander Photo taken by Evin Carter, a PhD student at the University of Tennessee.
|
Matthew Niemiller, Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Kentucky Department of Biology knows the caves at Ijams. He has inventoried them before.
Recently, Matt went back into the cave that is gated in Hayworth Hollow in the Ross Marble Natural Area.
Matt emails, "In terms of cave life, we saw three Berry Cave Salamanders, eleven tricolored bats (formerly known as the Eastern pipistrelle), over a dozen Appalachian brook crayfish, cave amphipods, terrestrial cave isopods, several cave millipedes, likely are a new population of Scoterpes blountensis, and a cave beetle (most likely an East Tennessee cave beetle (Pseudanophthalmus tennesseensis) was the first record for the cave and a very surprise find."
The Berry cave salamander is "state threatened" and only found in three countries: Knox, Roane and McMinn, which is one reason the caves at Ijams are gated closed.
Image seems to be a gmail attachment that's unavailable.
ReplyDelete