Journal
BIOLOGICAL REVIEWS
Volume 95, Issue 6, Pages 1855-1872Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/brv.12642
Keywords
biospeleology; cave biology; expert opinion; groundwater; horizon scanning; research questions; stygofauna; troglobionts
Categories
Funding
- CAWEB project Testing macroecological theory using simplified systems - European Commission through Horizon 2020 Marie Skodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) individual fellowships [882221]
- Portuguese funds through FCT - FundacAo para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the Norma Transitoria [DL57/2016/CP1375/CT0003]
- IFREMER
- CERES Climate change and European Aquatic Resources project - European Commission through Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [678193]
- Slovenian Research Agency [P1-0184, N1-0069]
- NSF [DEB1754231, IOS1933428]
- EDGE award [1923372]
- French National Research Agency [ANR-15-CE32-0005, ANR-17-EURE-0018]
- ANCAVE project Anchialine caves to understand evolutionary processes - European Commission through Horizon 2020 Marie Skodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) individual fellowships [745530]
- project AZORESBIOPORTAL - PORBIOTA - FEDER [ACORES-01-0145-FEDER-000072]
- Azorean Public funds by 15% through Operational Program Azores 2020
- Carlsbergfondet grant [CF19-0609]
- Vale S.A. [RDP 00092-18]
- FundacAo de Amparo a Pesquisa de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG) [RDP 00092-18]
- Karst Research Programme [P6-0119]
- LifeWatch ERIC
- RI-SI LifeWatch
- EU H2020 project eLTER
- VILLUM FONDEN [15471]
- Marie Curie Actions (MSCA) [745530] Funding Source: Marie Curie Actions (MSCA)
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) [ANR-17-EURE-0018] Funding Source: Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR)
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Five decades ago, a landmark paper inSciencetitledThe Cave Environmentheralded caves as ideal natural experimental laboratories in which to develop and address general questions in geology, ecology, biogeography, and evolutionary biology. Although the 'caves as laboratory' paradigm has since been advocated by subterranean biologists, there are few examples of studies that successfully translated their results into general principles. The contemporary era of big data, modelling tools, and revolutionary advances in genetics and (meta)genomics provides an opportunity to revisit unresolved questions and challenges, as well as examine promising new avenues of research in subterranean biology. Accordingly, we have developed a roadmap to guide future research endeavours in subterranean biology by adapting a well-established methodology of 'horizon scanning' to identify the highest priority research questions across six subject areas. Based on the expert opinion of 30 scientists from around the globe with complementary expertise and of different academic ages, we assembled an initial list of 258 fundamental questions concentrating on macroecology and microbial ecology, adaptation, evolution, and conservation. Subsequently, through online surveys, 130 subterranean biologists with various backgrounds assisted us in reducing our list to 50 top-priority questions. These research questions are broad in scope and ready to be addressed in the next decade. We believe this exercise will stimulate research towards a deeper understanding of subterranean biology and foster hypothesis-driven studies likely to resonate broadly from the traditional boundaries of this field.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available