EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Life in the Lava

Lava Tube
Santa Cruz Island, Galápagos Islands, Ecuador

Explanation:  Welcome to the Tunel de Lava Bellavista.  We are on Santa Cruz Island of the amazing Galápagos Islands of Ecuador.  And there is life here!

We have previously explored invertebrate life in other caves and tunnels.  But these are lava tubes under a lava landscape.  That life persists here is remarkable.

Numerous insect and other invertebrate life forms dwell here, such as springtails (Katz et al. 2016).  

And life dwelled here (past tense).  Now-extinct, there were two species of large rodents, fossil remains of which have been found only in lava tubes of the Galápagos (Steadman et al. 1991).  

Here, too, is a vast lava field ... on Big Island of the
Hawaiian Islands, USA.  And here, too, extend
subterranean lava tubes, poorly studied as they are.
  

Islands themselves often host unique life forms, so it may be that lava tubes and tunnels could be extra special habitat for the evolution of highly endemic and very rare forms of life yet to be discovered.  

How I want to study these places now!
 

Information:
    Katz, A.D., S.J. Taylor, F. N. Soto-Adames, A. Addison, G.B. Hoese, M.R. Sutton, and T. Toulkeridis.  2016.  New records and new species of springtails (Collembola: Entomobryidae, Paronellidae) from lava tubes of the Galápagos Islands (Ecuador).  Subterranean Biology 17:77-120.
    Steadman, D.W., T.W. Stafford, Jr., D.J. Donahue, and A.J. Jull.  1991.  Chronology of Holocene vertebrate extinction in the Galápagos Islands.  Quaternary Research 36(1):126-133.