Extinct No More: Scientists Discover Reappearance of Crayfish at Shelta Cave in Alabama

For decades, scientists were apprehensive that the Shelta Cave crayfish or Orconectes sheltie, last seen in 1988, had gone into extinction until a recently published paper revealed otherwise.

A WIRED report described the 2,500-foot-long Shelta Cave winds beneath forested hills and suburban neighborhoods.

Within the cave, a stale smell is wafting through the humid, cool air, and the dripping water's sound echoes along its limestone walls.

Among three massive halls, up to 30 feet in height and hundreds of feet in length, there are a series of crystal clear lakes in late winter and spring during the rainy season, when the water levels of the cave rise as much as 15 feet. More so, in those likes, in the darkness, a small, translucent crayfish is making its home.

Tiny Crayfish in Shelta Cave

The small crayfish is hanging on, although considered critically endangered because of groundwater pollution and other human activity.

Since 2017, Matthew Niemiller, the senior author of the paper published in the Subterranean Biology, and a biologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has made over 21 trips to Shelta Cave.

The research team aimed to survey present biodiversity, although they hoped to rediscover its most untouchable resident. Niemiller said they wanted to reassess the cave community there, both "terrestrial and aquatic."

Specifically, he added, they wanted to make an effort to try and find some of the species that had not been seen in a few decades.

Cave-Dwelling Species

The cave-dwelling crayfish lack any pigment, not to mention that they are blind. These creatures resemble small white lobsters dancing across the silty lake bed.

The pincers are narrower compared to other cave crayfish. Sharing its home with two other crayfish species, the southern cave or Oronectes australis and Alabama cave or Cambarus jonesi, the Shelta crayfish is the tiniest of the bunch, measuring a little more than one inch.

Historically, Shelta Cave was among the most diverse cave systems in the eastern United States. Long before the team and other scientists came along, shrimp, crayfish, salamanders, beetles, and other animals lived out their days in the dark.

Frequently blind and without pigmentation, many cave-dwelling species live longer than their surface-dwelling relatives because of slower metabolisms, a common evolutionary adjustment to subterranean life.

22-Year-Lifespan

Essentially, the southern cave crayfish, O. australis of Shelta, live up to 22 years, and it is believed that the Shelta Cave crayfish has the same lifespan.

Meanwhile, a colony of gray bats made Shelta Cave their home. Tiny enough to fit in the palm, these "adorable, furry microbats" deposited guano throughout the cave, an essential food source for many other cave critters, including the Shelta Cave crayfish.

For hundreds of years, the balanced ecosystem of bats, crayfish, and other Shelta Cave animals continued, uninterrupted, Atlas Obscura, where this report first came out, specified.

Thomas Iliffe, a marine cave biologist from Texas A&M who was not part of the study, said, he thought the discovery reported in the new paper was very cool.

Caves are quite a special environment, he added, saying, even in those that he has been to many, many times, and he thinks he knows well, there is always the potential to discover something new or to rediscover something believed to be lost forever.

Related information about the Shelta Cave Crayfish is shown on Fox54 News Huntsville's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Endangered Species in Science Times.