Cave Entrances - Egyptian Cave

Trip Date: 2023-11-05
The objective of this trip was to see what lives in Entrance Zone of Egyptian Cave

Egyptian Cave

Egyptian Cave is large, open chamber. The whole cave is mostly in the twilight zone, with the possible exception of a low, sandy passage that heads towards Blue Disa Cave. The passage was not investigated on this trip.

Water was dripping from the ceiling at the back of the main chamber, and there was a shallow pool, filled by the drops falling from the ceiling. I did not see any life in the pool. The cave is very polluted. Broken glass, plastic and old zinc carbon batteries can be found throughout the cave.

The whole cave is closely coupled to the surface environment, and a lot of organic material falls into the entrance from the trees that surround the entrance.

I expected to find Paramelita and planaria in the pool, but did not. This may be because it is fed by drips from the ceiling, rather than water flowing into the pool. This may be different in winter.

I did find:

• 17x Cave Crickets, 4 in the passage under the entrance, and 13 near the pool
• 1x small Phyxelidid Spider. The head+abdomen together were about 8mm long. I thought it was a small False-violin spider, but was corrected.
• 3x Spermophora peninsulae All three where quite small.
• 1x Another spider. Small whole spider about 3mm.
• 1x Another spider. Very small whole spider was less than 1mm. No picture.
• 2x Mosquitoes? Not sure about this. They looked like mosquitoes, but I did not catch one.
• 1x harvestman It looks quite small, and the legs appear to be transparent.
• 1x snail This is probably fell into the cave along with the dead leaves it was on.

Posted on November 7, 2023 06:15 PM by peterswart