Contribute
The portal is built by the people who work on these
animals
This is a compilation, and compilations have gaps. Some of what is here is wrong, a great deal is missing, and the people most likely to know are the specialists, cavers, and agency staff who work on subterranean fauna. Everything below takes a few minutes and goes to a real person.
What is missing
These are not complaints. They are the shape of what a small compilation can do on its own, and where other people make the difference.
Ways to help
Report a correction
A wrong authority, outdated taxonomy, a distribution record that should not be there, a broken link. Corrections are the most useful email we get.
Takes a minute. No citation needed.
Tell us about a new species
Cave taxonomy is published across dozens of small journals and no aggregator catches it quickly. If you have described something, or seen a description we have missed, this is the fastest way in.
Name, authority, and the reference is enough.
Contribute a photograph or image
Almost no species here has an image, and photographs of caves, habitat, and fieldwork are just as scarce. Illustrations and diagrams are welcome too.
You keep copyright and set the terms. Every use is credited.
Submit an observation
A record of a species from a cave, whether or not it has been published. Useful for filling distribution gaps and for confirming that a population is still there.
Coordinates are never published. Cave names are, where they are already public. See the Data Sensitivity Policy.
Add a reference
A paper, report, or thesis relevant to a species here that we have not cited. Grey literature especially, since that is what a compilation misses.
A citation or a DOI is enough.
Post an opportunity
Grants, fellowships, jobs, studentships, and field courses in cave and karst science. No charge, and no commercial advertising.
Removed automatically on the closing date.
Write a species account
Most accounts here are structured records: classification, distribution, conservation status, specimens, sequences. What they lack is the part only someone who works on the group can write, describing what the animal is, where it lives, and what is known of its biology.
Contributors are credited by name and ORCID, hold authorship of their text, and their accounts are versioned and separately citable. If you work on a group covered here, we would like to hear from you.
What happens to what you send
- It reaches us as a draft or an email. Nothing appears on the site automatically.
- We check it, and ask you if anything is unclear.
- It is published, credited where credit is due, and recorded in the account's edit history.
- We write back.
Localities are handled carefully. Coordinates are never published and distribution is shown at county and karst region level; cave names are published where they are already public, and withheld on request or where naming would put a site at risk. The Data Sensitivity Policy sets out how.