Iceland’s lava caves are just a small part of the vast underground habitats on Earth.
Tommy Oh Photography/Getty Images
Stefano Mammola was standing in a mossy forest overlooking the Po plain in northern Italy. In a moment, he was disappearing into the forest floor through a hole a little wider than his body. With less grace, I clambered after him and landed in the hole two meters below. The tunnel ahead was the entrance to a three-kilometer network of caves. I faltered, and Mammola, a cave biologist at the Institute of Water Resources in Verbania, Italy, comforted me with the story of an unusual spider that lives deep in the caves. The silk threads of this spider’s cocoon can stretch more than seven times its body length without breaking, remarkable even by arachnid standards.
Super-strong silk is just one way life has adapted to some of the most vast and unexplored terrestrial ecosystems on Earth: the caves, cracks, and tiny crevices beneath the Earth’s crust. Scientists have spent the past few decades exploring these remote places, cataloging and studying the creatures that live there. And now they’re sounding the alarm.
Until recently, it was thought that this underground life survived relatively unaffected by climate change in its cool, isolated environment. But new research has disproved this idea. Global warming, droughts, changing seasons and rising sea levels all reach underground shelters, putting the organisms that live there in unique situations. And yet we know so little about these fantastical creatures. Mammola coordinated a project aimed at mapping Europe’s entire underground ecosystems, discovering what biodiversity exists and finding places to prioritise conservation efforts. This strange and wonderful world is…
