Center of studies on
Subterranean Biology

Considering the overall scenario of biodiversity loss and its impacts on ecosystems, the importance of understanding the mechanisms that maintain stable ecological communities becomes clear and to understand ecological patterns and processes, caves are an environment that can be considered a natural laboratory. These represent a more simplified natural environment, as they present lower species richness, lower environmental parameter variations, and more clearly defined physical boundaries when compared to external environments. Therefore, for us to understand the importance of the biodiversity and complexity of communities to remain stable facing the various disturbances, we will conduct experimental studies. Such experiments will be conducted in limestone and quartzite caves with different levels of benthic macroinvertebrate diversity and different levels of complexity and trophic interactions. With this, we will seek to understand whether more diverse and complex communities are more stable.