Johalvin Cave - Transition Zone

Trip Date: 2023-11-11
The objective of this trip was to see what lives in Johalvin Cave, Kalk Bay Mountains

Egyptian Cave

Popped on at Eyptian Cave to look for a missing coffee mug. Did not find the mug, but found tweezers I left behind last week.

I found:

• 8x Spermophora peninsulae within 0.5m x 0.5 m, appeared to be sharing the same web
• Small white amphipod
• A bristletail close to the entance.
• I could NOT find the mosquitos I saw last week

Johalvin Cave

Johalvin Cave is an enlarge crack under the floor of a tree filled alcove. The floor of the cave is between 4m and 6m below the floor of the alcove. Most of the cave receives some filtered light for most of the day, while there are some small permanently dark areas at the back of the cave.

Water drips into the cave from the ceiling, and runs out through a narrow passage towards Commemoration Hall Cave, and Broken Pot Grotto.

Most of the cave can thus be considered to be an Transistion Zone. Under the sky light entrance, there is a lot of rotting leaf material and any animals in this area could have fallen into the cave. I spent 4.5 hours in this relatively small cave, and found the following:

I found:

• 27x Cave Crickets
• 5x False violin spiders. Some lived very close (overlapping webs) with similar sized Phyxelididae spiders
• lots of other spiders
• 3x bristletails
• bat droppings (very old)
• Moths
• 1x Planarian (No photo)
• 1x harvestman
• 2 snails

The soil under the sky light is full of life. Colembola, diplura, symphyla, earthworms, centipedes, isopods, amphipods and much more. All of these are too small to photograph with my current gear.

Posted on November 12, 2023 06:32 PM by peterswart