Biospeleology

Biospeleology, also known as cave biology, is a branch of biology dedicated to the study of organisms that live in caves and are collectively referred to as troglofauna.

The first documented mention of a cave organisms dates back to 1689, with the documentation of the olm, a cave salamander. Discovered in a cave in Slovenia, in the region of Carniola, it was mistaken for a baby dragon and was recorded by Johann Weikhard von Valvasor in his work The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola. The first formal study on cave organisms was conducted on the blind cave beetle. Found in 1831 by Luka Čeč, an assistant to the lamplighter, when exploring the newly discovered inner portions of the Postojna cave system in southwestern Slovenia. The specimen was turned over to Ferdinand J. Schmidt, who described it in the paper Illyrisches Blatt (1832). He named it Leptodirus Hochenwartii after the donor, and also gave it the Slovene name drobnovratnik and the German name Enghalskäfer, both meaning "slender-necked (beetle)". The article represents the first formal description of a cave animal (the olm, described in 1768, wasn't recognized as a cave animal at the time). Subsequent research by Schmidt revealed further previously unknown cave inhabitants, which aroused considerable interest among natural historians. For this reason, the discovery of L. hochenwartii (along with the olm) is considered as the starting point of biospeleology as a scientific discipline. Biospeleology was formalized as a science in 1907 by Emil Racoviţă with his seminal work Essai sur les problèmes biospéologiques ("Essay on biospeleological problems").

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