Center of studies on
Subterranean Biology

Different collection methods are currently conducted to assess the diversity of subterranean systems. However, there is no comparative information demonstrating the effectiveness of each method for the assessment of the cave fauna  in different lithologies and different substrate conditions. Thus, it is impossible to determine the true representativeness of these methods for conducting subterranean fauna inventories. After review of the methods and the evidence of effectiveness in each of these, it will be possible to suggest which are more representative by lithology, by type of substrate present, by level of staff experience, and other parameters. This information will be important to environmental agencies, funding agencies and specialized journals agencies to define if fauna inventory sampling in a given project was appropriate to that objective proposed in the study.