New Species Emerge From Cave

A cave in southeastern Romania, isolated from the rest of the world for at least 5 million years, has yielded an unexpected bonanza of new species. Serban Sarbu, a Romanian biospeleologist, or cave biologist, fled the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1987 for the West. But with the downfall of that government, Sarbu returned last summer and resumed research he had abandoned four years ago in the Movile Cave. After three decades of extensive exploration of the area, it had been thought that the cave had yielded all its secrets. But in an article published this year in Memoires de Biospeologie, a scientific journal, Sarbu said he had identified 14 new species, including small shrimp-like crustaceans, snails and primitive insects, one new genus and one new subfamily. He expects the tally to increase as more specimens are collected and classified.The cave has two levels. The upper level is dry and about 200 yards long; the lower, 40 yards long, is submerged. ''This is a nasty cave,'' said Sarbu. ''The ones in Bermuda or Florida are huge, beautiful passages with no murky water or silt. This one is real narrow. You almost have to push the tanks in front of you and swim behind them.''

Source: Orlando Sentinel