To assess the role of rockland aquatic refuges and subterranean habitats in relation to system restoration, multi-disciplinary baseline data is being collected on constituent aquatic communities and their ecology. The Rocky Glades region has been adversely affected by water diversions, agriculture, and urban development. The highly eroded landscape of the Rocky Glades offers dry-season refuge to aquatic animals by permitting them access to ground water by way of deep solution holes, as well as in shallower solution holes. The Atlantic Coastal Ridge contains deeper cavities known to house truly subterranean aquatic species but the community composition, distribution, and abundance of hypogean species is still unknown. In this first project year, data are being collected that meet the project's objectives and also complement a related National Park Service (NPS) Critical Ecosystem Studies Initiative project that examines fish and invertebrate dynamics in shallow solution holes.

Objectives include:

• Develop effective traps to capture macro-invertebrates and fish from subterranean habitats in south Florida and describe those poorly known communities.
• Collect environmental parameters in wells to correlate seasonal changes in the groundwater aquatic environment with species distributions.
• Topographicly survey the habitat around the NPS solution-hole sampling sites to provide depth-distribution data for the Across Trophic Level Systems Simulation (ATLSS) model of the region.
• Because fishes appear to exhibit seasonal movement in a unilateral direction from the Rocky Glades (Loftus, pers. observ.), document and quantify this phenomena by pilot testing the use of drift fences and funnel traps to measure directional dispersal.
• Test a visual survey method for sampling fish communities in open, rugged terrain, where other methods fare poorly, to follow community dynamics in the Rocky Glades in the wet season.
• Collect life history data for the Miami cave crayfish from a captive population.

Several pilot studies have been preformed that examined the best trap design for capturing animals from groundwater in wells, tested the use of ground-penetrating radar to detect the existence of subterranean cavities, and designed a surveying approach to characterize the depth-distribution of solution holes near fish-sampling sites. A series of wells on east-west transects across the coastal ridge into the Everglades have been chosen for use as long-term monitoring wells for animal collections (see sample data in fig. 1). Four drift fence arrays have been erected to measure fish dispersal with the arrival of the wet season, and 16 visual survey plots have been set up. A life-history study of the Miami cave crayfish, a species that may become a candidate for federal listing, has also begun. A substantial population of subterranean crayfish is being raised in tanks at the well locations, and preliminary information is shown in figures 2, 3, and 4. Presently, the female of this species has not yet been described. Information will be gathered on sex ratios, fecundity and life stages. Different colored eggs and occasional albinos have been observed, so that this phenomenon will also be noted and documented.

This series of project elements combine to answer questions about the ecological interrelations of surface and subterranean habitats to address how management has adversely affected this region and what benefits hydrologic restoration will produce.

(This abstract was taken from the Greater Everglades Ecosystem Restoration (GEER) Open File Report (PDF, 8.7 MB))

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