Acknowledgements and Appendices - Department of the ...

FAMILY GENUS / SPECIES HABITAT LOCALITY
PHYLUM CLASS ORDER/
COMMON
2 1 8
NAME
coastal plain
bordering
Cape Range
Thermosbaenacea ** Halosbaenidae Halosbaena tulki # Anchialine cave. One species only (i.e. H. tulki)
within the order of Thermosbaenacea, occurs in
the Southern Hemisphere.
H. tulki belongs to a genus previously known only
from saline waters in the West Indies, Columbia
and Canary Islands.
Thermosbaenacea are a rare order of considerable
biogeographic interest because their known
distribution is so scattered.
Thermosbaenaceans are an order of eyeless,
unpigmented peracarid crustaceans represented
by very few species from subterranean waters. The
Thermosbaenacea are primarily marine, with only
18 species recorded in fresh water conditions or
in brackish inland waters whose salinity does not
derive from dilution of seawater. They occur in
limestone caves, the interstitial medium associated
with alluvial deposits, or in thermo-mineral
springs. The distribution of the Thermosbaenacea
matches precisely the area covered by the ancient
Tethys Sea or its coastlines. They are probably
relicts of a once widespread shallow-water marine
Tethyan fauna stranded in interstitial or crevicular
groundwater during marine regressions.
ARTHROPODA
Subphylum
CRuSTACEA
(continued)
Bundera sinkhole.
No other site known
in Australia that
gives access to deep
anchialine habitat.
Anchialine cave, in seawater.
Listed under Schedule 1 ‘Fauna that is rare or
is likely to become extinct’ under the Western
Australian Wildlife Conservation Act.
The first occurrence of this genus in the southern
hemisphere and the Indo-west Pacific region.
Halocyprida Thaumatocyprididae Danielopolina
kornickeri #
Ostracoda:
(ostracods)
Occurs as a Tethyan element in the anchialine
system at Cape Range. Fossils in marine cave
facies in Czech Republic suggest this lineage was
already inhabiting marine caves in the Jurassic.
northern end of
the Cape Range
peninsula
Tetragonicipitidae Phyllopodopsyllus wellsi Anchialine ecosystem. It is the only known
occurrence of the genus in Australia as well as the
first outside strictly marine habitats however it
displays clear stygomorphies.
Harpacticoida
(copepods)
Copepoda:
(copepods)
[a zooplankton]
** Congeneric with marine troglobites of the Atlantic
# The stygofauna of Cape Range Peninsula includes the sympatric occurrence of a number of taxa with disjunct Tethyan distributions
Genera in bold are endemic to the area, as are all the species with the exception of some of the copepod species