Iceland’s lava caves are a tiny fraction of the vast underground habitats found all over the planet.
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One moment, Stefano Mamola stood in a mossy forest overlooking the Po Plain in northern Italy. The next, he disappeared into the forest floor through a hole just a little wider than his body. Less gracefully, I crawled after him and landed two meters below in a pit. The tunnel ahead was the gateway to a three-kilometer-long cave network. As I stumbled, Mamola, a speleologist at the Water Resources Institute in Verbania, Italy, cheered me on with stories about exotic spiders that live deep down. These spiders have a cocoon of silk that can stretch more than seven times its length without breaking—a feat even by arachnid standards.
Super-strong silk is just one of the ways life has adapted to the most vast and unexplored terrestrial ecosystems on Earth: the caves, cracks, and crevices beneath the Earth’s crust. Scientists have spent decades exploring these remote regions, cataloging and studying the creatures that live there. Now, they’re raising the alarm.
Until recently, these subterranean creatures were thought to reside in cool, isolated places, relatively unaffected by climate change. But new research has shattered that belief. Warmth, drought, seasonal changes and rising sea levels all reach underground refuges, leaving their inhabitants uniquely isolated. But our ignorance of these fascinating creatures is staggering. Mammola coordinated a project that aims to map the entire subterranean ecosystem of Europe, revealing what biodiversity exists and figuring out where to prioritize conservation efforts. This strange and wonderful world is…
