New genus of cricket discovered in Arizona.

May, 2006. A new genus of cave cricket has been discovered in a remote corner of Arizona by J. Wynne, a cave research scientist with U.S. Geological Survey, and Kyle Voyles from Parashant National Monument. ‘The discovery may be very relevant to the management and conservation of cave resources,’ Wynne said.

The researchers also discovered three potential new cricket species and a new barklouse species. They were all found during an ecological inventory of twenty four caves in Parashant National Monument. Crickets provide an important ecological service to the environment; species are often the primary decomposers in cave ecosystems.

According to Neil Cobb, curator of the Colorado Plateau Museum of Arthropod Biodiversity, discovering a new genus in such a well-known order in North America is very rare.

‘Cave systems are one of the last frontiers in temperate regions for finding new taxa,’ Cobb added. ‘As caves are such extreme environments, cave arthropods are usually highly specialized and often endemic to a solitary cave system or region.’ Cave-dwelling invertebrates are important as they are often very rare and very limited in distribution, Cobb said.

There are over 1,000 caves that have been identified in Arizona but less than three percent have been properly surveyed. ‘Cave ecosystems are amongst the most poorly understood and fragile ecosystems,’ Wynne said. ‘Discovering of a new cricket genus from a north-western Arizona cave just shows how little is known about these ecosystems.’

Wynne has 2 cave projects ongoing at the USGS. He is developing methods for locating new caves by using thermal remote sensing technologies, procedures that are being developed to locate caves on Mars. Once they have identified Martian caves, robot cave explorers will be created to search for life under the Martian surface.
Courtesy of NAU