wes_von_papineäu
Our Roving Correspondent
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NEWS SENTINEL (Knoxville, Tennessee) 28 January 08 Quarry found below ground - South Knox home to most of world’s Berry cave salamanders (Morgan Simmons)
At the base of the quarry pit was a large opening that led to a subterranean world of darkness and mud. In addition to helmets and headlamps, we wore wet suits.
The object of our search was the Berry cave salamander, a rare species known almost exclusively from five caves within a 12-mile radius of Knoxville. In recent months, Matt Niemiller, a doctoral student with the University of Tennessee's department of ecology and evolutionary biology, has been studying the Berry cave salamander at ground zero - the system of caves beneath the abandoned Mead's marble quarry next to Ijams Nature Center in South Knoxville.
With Niemiller on a recent monitoring trip was Ben Fitzpatrick, an assistant professor in the same UT department. Their clothes and equipment were encrusted with mud. A few feet from the mouth of the cave, they began wading the stream that had dissolved the limestone passage.
"It's cold at first, but you'll get used to it," promised Niemiller.
In some places, the cave stream came up to our waists. A short distance from the entrance, the temperature remained steady at about 56 degrees, and our headlamps revealed raccoon tracks along the mud bank. In the first 50 yards, we saw a green frog, a crayfish and a solitary bat dangling from the roof of the cave.
We were in the main passage of a hydrologically connected cave system that eventually empties into the spring-fed lake at Mead's Quarry. Every 30 feet or so, we came to a salamander trap that Niemiller and Fitzpatrick had set previously. Some were minnow traps, while others consisted of a net filled with leaf litter, which would attract small crayfish and other food sources of the Berry cave salamander.
The first minnow trap held a Berry cave salamander approximately 6 inches long from its tail tip to its snout. It was milky gray, with pale markings and pinprick eyes. It had a flattened head, a tail fin and rows of sensory pores for detecting movement and vibrations in the dark.
"They have developed increased starvation resistance," Fitzpatrick said. "They can be very patient when it comes to not eating."
About 5,600 feet of the Mead's Quarry Cave have been mapped. For the most part, the passage was high enough to stand upright, but in places, we had to crawl.
Mud was everywhere. It threatened to suck off our boots as we waded the stream, and it even coated some of the cave formations. We climbed up mud slopes that were so slick, the safest way to get down them was to slide like river otters.
Niemiller used an aquarium net to capture another Berry cave salamander. Altogether, they captured and released six specimens while underground for almost three hours that day.
Niemiller was pretty sure he had trapped several of the salamanders before at the same location, suggesting that the Berry cave salamander may have a restricted home range.
"Oh yeah, it's him again," he said, inspecting a salamander that looked familiar.
The Berry cave salamander is similar in habitat and life history to the Tennessee cave salamander, the official state amphibian. Both species are believed to be good indicators of groundwater contamination, which, in the case of the Berry cave salamander, is worrisome given the fact that the species' largest known population lives beneath an abandoned marble quarry inside Knoxville's city limits.
In addition to the salamanders themselves, Niemiller and Fitzpatrick also are monitoring habitat conditions in the Mead's Quarry Cave. Every 66 feet, they stopped to test the stream's pH, temperature and conductivity.
While the water temperature remained constant at about 56 degrees Fahrenheit, the pH level spiked alarmingly below a waterfall about a quarter-mile back in the cave, presumably the result of strong alkali from the quarry's lime kilns leaching into the cave stream.
Fitzpatrick said that though the research is still in the early stages, the Berry cave salamanders they so far have collected near the waterfall exhibit abnormalities that could be caused by contaminants at the surface.
The stream would continue for another 1,500 feet before disappearing into a silt field, but this was where we turned back.
The sun was shining when we exited the cave. There was a dusting of snow on the ground, and despite our wet suits, we began to shiver.
In addition to salamanders, Niemiller also studies Southern cavefish. He spends a lot of time caving on the Cumberland Plateau and said most of those caves are a lot less muddy than the one at Mead's Quarry.
"Most people don't realize we have such a rare organism this close to Knoxville," he said. "It's found practically nowhere else, and it's right here under our nose."
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/jan/28/0128cavefish/
NEWS SENTINEL (Knoxville, Tennessee) 28 January 08 Quarry found below ground - South Knox home to most of world’s Berry cave salamanders (Morgan Simmons)
At the base of the quarry pit was a large opening that led to a subterranean world of darkness and mud. In addition to helmets and headlamps, we wore wet suits.
The object of our search was the Berry cave salamander, a rare species known almost exclusively from five caves within a 12-mile radius of Knoxville. In recent months, Matt Niemiller, a doctoral student with the University of Tennessee's department of ecology and evolutionary biology, has been studying the Berry cave salamander at ground zero - the system of caves beneath the abandoned Mead's marble quarry next to Ijams Nature Center in South Knoxville.
With Niemiller on a recent monitoring trip was Ben Fitzpatrick, an assistant professor in the same UT department. Their clothes and equipment were encrusted with mud. A few feet from the mouth of the cave, they began wading the stream that had dissolved the limestone passage.
"It's cold at first, but you'll get used to it," promised Niemiller.
In some places, the cave stream came up to our waists. A short distance from the entrance, the temperature remained steady at about 56 degrees, and our headlamps revealed raccoon tracks along the mud bank. In the first 50 yards, we saw a green frog, a crayfish and a solitary bat dangling from the roof of the cave.
We were in the main passage of a hydrologically connected cave system that eventually empties into the spring-fed lake at Mead's Quarry. Every 30 feet or so, we came to a salamander trap that Niemiller and Fitzpatrick had set previously. Some were minnow traps, while others consisted of a net filled with leaf litter, which would attract small crayfish and other food sources of the Berry cave salamander.
The first minnow trap held a Berry cave salamander approximately 6 inches long from its tail tip to its snout. It was milky gray, with pale markings and pinprick eyes. It had a flattened head, a tail fin and rows of sensory pores for detecting movement and vibrations in the dark.
"They have developed increased starvation resistance," Fitzpatrick said. "They can be very patient when it comes to not eating."
About 5,600 feet of the Mead's Quarry Cave have been mapped. For the most part, the passage was high enough to stand upright, but in places, we had to crawl.
Mud was everywhere. It threatened to suck off our boots as we waded the stream, and it even coated some of the cave formations. We climbed up mud slopes that were so slick, the safest way to get down them was to slide like river otters.
Niemiller used an aquarium net to capture another Berry cave salamander. Altogether, they captured and released six specimens while underground for almost three hours that day.
Niemiller was pretty sure he had trapped several of the salamanders before at the same location, suggesting that the Berry cave salamander may have a restricted home range.
"Oh yeah, it's him again," he said, inspecting a salamander that looked familiar.
The Berry cave salamander is similar in habitat and life history to the Tennessee cave salamander, the official state amphibian. Both species are believed to be good indicators of groundwater contamination, which, in the case of the Berry cave salamander, is worrisome given the fact that the species' largest known population lives beneath an abandoned marble quarry inside Knoxville's city limits.
In addition to the salamanders themselves, Niemiller and Fitzpatrick also are monitoring habitat conditions in the Mead's Quarry Cave. Every 66 feet, they stopped to test the stream's pH, temperature and conductivity.
While the water temperature remained constant at about 56 degrees Fahrenheit, the pH level spiked alarmingly below a waterfall about a quarter-mile back in the cave, presumably the result of strong alkali from the quarry's lime kilns leaching into the cave stream.
Fitzpatrick said that though the research is still in the early stages, the Berry cave salamanders they so far have collected near the waterfall exhibit abnormalities that could be caused by contaminants at the surface.
The stream would continue for another 1,500 feet before disappearing into a silt field, but this was where we turned back.
The sun was shining when we exited the cave. There was a dusting of snow on the ground, and despite our wet suits, we began to shiver.
In addition to salamanders, Niemiller also studies Southern cavefish. He spends a lot of time caving on the Cumberland Plateau and said most of those caves are a lot less muddy than the one at Mead's Quarry.
"Most people don't realize we have such a rare organism this close to Knoxville," he said. "It's found practically nowhere else, and it's right here under our nose."
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/jan/28/0128cavefish/