Examining Hydrologic Connections at Fern Cave, Alabama and Implications of Stream Connectivity on Biological Diversity and Isolation

Fern Cave in northern Alabama is a 15 mile-long complex cave system owned and managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Southeastern Cave Conservancy. The cave is extraordinarily complex, with over 500 ft of vertical relief, dozens of vertical shafts, a variety of cave habitats, and multiple streams. An ongoing biological study of the cave has found that the system is one of the most bio-diverse in the southeastern U.S., a region already recognized as a cave biodiversity hotspot. Recent surveys have found the cave is home to over 70 taxa and at least 23 cave-obligate species in both the terrestrial and aquatic habitats of Fern Cave. Given that the significance of the cave, both speleologically and biologically, the opportunity to build upon this recent research in order to better understand the connectivity of the biological environments, particularly in aquatic habitat, to better understand where and what outside influences to the cave environment might exist, and to understand how these underground stream environments behave. The proposal below is a request for funding to begin what will hopefully become a more intensive study of the hydrology and biology looking at the dynamics of nutrient and water movement from the surface through the cave and how it affects the biodiversity found within.