Talk:Stygofauna

Conservation

I'm a geologist. I know SFA about these critters except that they are a 'hot button' issue for conservationists in Australia at the moment. For instance, you'll get a mining company which will drill a hole, and the government-sponsored guys who first described the stygofauna now run the whole show. So. You drill a hole into an aquifer and of course you find critters living in the aqifer and of course they are unique and of course you have to then pay these guys $60,000 to do a full-blown stygofauna survey and inevitably the recommendation is that you can't do anything because you have 5 species of rock shrimp which can't be disturbed or they'll choke and die.

So now we have Greenpeace, the Wilderness Society and everyone up in arms about stygofauna you can and do find everywhere (not just in Australia, but in Italy, China, etc).

Personally, I think it's crazy that we are out making the tiger extinct, and diging up farmland world over, putting houses down in urban sprawls, and no one is saying that every species of worm, skeeter, silverfish or ant should be preserved, and here we have rock shrimp being used as ultra-important emergency poster-children for conservation, when most conservationists couldn't even see them (lack of microscopes) and never visit their desert habitats. And then I think: of course they are endemic to their aquifers. Its hard for a stygofauna to travel far, share its genes, when its living in a fricking rock for effs sakes.

Anyway. I've put the article up, said my bit in the discussion part, and now its over to the biologists to make this a pretty article.

Rolinator 03:53, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Definitions

The definition of stygofauna put up there before was actually wrong so I corrected and expanded it. I did agree that some people use stygofauna as leverage to conserve many areas of Australia, but found the article to be pretty bias against anyone looking to conserve species. It is really irritating when people group extremist conservationists along with researchers (like myself), as most biologists know it is not possible to protect all species everywhere. As such, I added in the proposed idea of finding 'hotspots' of biodiversity to protect, so that groundwater extraction, mining, etc. can still take place.

I'm not sure why this article was even written by someone who says they know nothing about stygofauna, so I've tried to improve it to be scientifically valid from what I know. I am not someone who has been studying stygofauna for 20 years, so have tried to keep it brief but correct. It needs much more work, which hopefully I will be able to add to once I have finished my thesis on stygofauna from the Pilbara, Western Australia!

Pictures

Obviously this article would much appreciate some nice pictures. Nothing on commons by that name. ~ R.T.G 08:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Bias

This article is biased beyond belief, it is purely anti-environmental advocacy with no references. 213.112.199.156 (talk) 16:41, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Description too inclusive

Now this article starts out: “Stygofauna are any fauna that live within groundwater systems, such as caves and aquifers.” It seems to go too far in calling a cave a groundwater system. There are lots of things that live in caves that aren't stygofauna I think. Maybe “such as in (some?) caves and aquifers”? or perhaps “Stygofauna are any fauna that can live within the small pores of groundwater systems”? Bob Burkhardt (talk) 19:37, 25 April 2013 (UTC) Please see if my changes address this comment Bob michaelomorph (talk) 05:06, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I think the focus is on cave water, rather than groundwater. Blind salamanders and cave fish certainly don't live in minute soil pores. Indiscriminate usage of "groundwater" in this article obscures the meaning, and its usage and wikilinks should probably be altered or removed. --Animalparty-- (talk) 18:56, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

The focus is on both cave water and groundwater. Why do you think the link to groundwater obscures the meaning? Re: minute soil pores and large stygal animals, I have slightly reworked the sentence, have a look. michaelomorph (talk) 00:17, 28 November 2013 (UTC)