Invertebrate and Vertebrate Cave Fauna Records for the Appalachian Valley and Ridge

Of the >50,000 caves reported in the United States, nearly 1,140 cave-restricted animals (troglobionts) have been described. One of the most biodiverse karst areas in the United States is the area near the shared boundaries of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia (TAG) in the Appalachian Valley and Ridge (AVR) ecoregion. Large sampling gaps in the AVR likely indicate considerable undiscovered biodiversity. From 2013 to 2016, survey teams conducted visual encounter surveys in 95 unique AVR caves, including 64 caves in eastern Tennessee, seven caves in northeastern Alabama, and 24 caves in northwestern Georgia. In Tennessee, most of the caves had never been comprehensively bioinventoried, and some counties were without records for obligate cave fauna. Our effort doubled the knowledge of troglobiont distribution in Tennessee caves alone, simply by increasing the number of caves with new troglobiont records. To date, at least 80 distinct troglobiont species have been identified from caves in the AVR. Species descriptions are ongoing. Among the invertebrates, pseudoscorpions represent some of the most significant terrestrial records. New distribution records now exist for 15 terrestrial and aquatic taxa, and we discovered potentially nine undescribed species, including two species of aquatic hydrobiid snails, five pseudoscorpions, a harvestman, and an annelid. We identified new locations for the federally endangered Gray Bat (Myotis grisescens) and for the only cave-adapted vertebrate in the AVR of Tennessee, the Berry Cave Salamander (Gyrinophilus gulolineatus). We also discovered a new population of Southern Cavefish (Typhlichthys subterraneus) in the AVR of northwestern Georgia, which represents a significant range extension for this species. Collectively, this study emphasizes the importance of bioinventories in understanding the distribution of cave fauna in karst regions. Previous assumptions about the lack of troglobiont or stygobiont diversity in the AVR of TAG were largely due to enduring sampling gaps.