Mapping subterranean resources: The cave invertebrates distribution as indicator of food availability

Lopes Ferreira, RodrigoParentoni Martins, Rogério

The trophic dynamic in cave ecosystems is poorly known, even being essential for understanding thestructure and function of an entire cave ecosystem. The determination of sites of resource availability in caves is thefirst step to understand its trophic dynamic. We propose here methods to indicate resource accumulation sites incaves. The overlap of distribution of a pair of invertebrate scavenger species can indicate the sites of resourceaccumulation. It was assumed that sites where these organisms are more abundant are probably those with higherresource availability. To be good indicators, these species should not exclude one another competitively. In addition,species populations must be generalist, abundant, wide distributed into the cave and easily sampled by pitfall traps.The distribution of invertebrates as a method we propose is very important, since the structure of cave communities arestrongly resource dependent. Hence, the detection of sites with greater resource availability is fundamental to understandthe trophic dynamics of cave communities.