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A cave spider

Hidden life

An exhibition about the fascinating cave spiders in the Dinaric Alps region.

Earth is the only planet we know of that harbours life... and it harbours a great deal of it. The extent of colonisation is such that the millions of living beings we know about can be found even in the places furthest from sunlight, such as the depths of caves where complete darkness prevents any plants from growing. Within the caverns and potholes lives cave fauna, which has adapted to darkness, and the caves in the Dinaric Alps in Croatia are an area where there is great biodiversity of these animals, mainly spiders. So you can discover them and find out how they are studied, the Animal Biodiversity Resource Centre at UB's Faculty of Biology is holding the exhibition HiddenLife, Shedding light on the world’s darkest biodiversity hotspot, which you can visit until 30 September.

Throughout natural history, the inhabitants of caves have evolved to survive in darkness. They have dispensed with everything that is not useful, such as vision and pigmentation, but in exchange have developed several characteristics that make them more efficient at hunting, reproducing and fleeing predators in the absence of light, such as being covered in sensory hairs that give them information about their environment. More than a hundred species of cave spiders that have many of these adaptations have been identified in the Dinaric Alps.

For 20 years, the Croatian Biospeleological Society has conducted a detailed study and expanded our knowledge of these creatures and their environment. In spite of being hidden away from the surface, this environment is also vulnerable to the disturbances caused by human activity. The research project that Martina Pavlek is carrying out at UB thus focuses on studying the effects of climate change and other environmental disturbances on cave biodiversity. It is a HiddenLife project, after which this exposition is named, consisting of pictures by Martina Pavlek and Tin Rozman, and text by the researcher herself.

See more information through this link.

 

Publication date: Thursday, 20 June 2019
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