Marine Lava Cave Fauna: Composition, Biogeography, and Origins
THOMAS M. ILIFFE 1,
HORST WILKENS 2,
JAKOB PARZEFALL 2, and
DENNIS WILLIAMS
1 Bermuda Biological Station for Research, Ferry Reach 1-15, Bermuda
2 Universität Hamburg, Zoologisches Institut und Zoologisches Museum, 2000 Hamburg 13, West Germany
An assemblage of endemic cavernicolous marine invertebrates, including taxa found on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean of great phylogenetic age or with affinities to deep sea organisms, inhabits the Jameos del Agua cave, a sea waterflooded Holocene lava tube cave on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. This marine cave contains both relicts from Tethyan times, such as an apparently new crustacean family belonging to what had been the monotypic class Remipedia, and relicts of groups that are now common only in the deep sea as well as species that occur outside the cave.
Submitted on December 8, 1983
Accepted on February 17, 1984
