In 1986, during a geological survey before construction of power plants near the Romanian town of Mangalia at a depth of about 18 meters was found closed cave system with original conditions. Fed by ground water with a high content of hydrogen sulphide (8-12 mg / L), a cave called Movil, had its atmosphere, oxygen-poor (7-10%), rich in carbon dioxide (2-3.5%) and containing a significant amount of methane (1 -2%). Her research began in 1990.
The beauty of this relatively small cave (the length of the explored part of about 300 m) with narrow aisles, covered with clay, not amazing - the standard limestone dirty hole with a lake, dividing the surface part of the three isolated cavity. The chip in the other.
The point is that this cave contains a unique ecosystem that exist and develop the past five million years, presumably with no connection to the earth's surface through chemosynthesis - not out of some microorganisms, as one would expect. In a closed stone bag of about 1200 m ² was found 46 species of terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates, 33 of them - are endemic, previously unknown and can not be found anywhere else. Among them are arthropods, leeches and mollusks, not to mention all rotifers and nematodes.

These autotrophic bacteria are a source of food for other heterotrophic bacteria and fungi. Together they form a bacterial mats and films, covering the walls of grottoes and surface water, especially in the third, the far-air bell, where the atmosphere is more "ethereal", and serve as food for the local "herbivorous" fauna - isopods, springtails, woodlice, pseudoscorpions on hunted predators - 5-cm centipedes and spiders. And under the water, the bottom of the bacterial film - its food pyramid: worms, crustaceans, snails, and the supreme predators - leech with water scorpions.
The ancestors of all of the company came under the ground, as I said, about five million years ago - when he was still alive yours, dear reader, the common ancestor with the dwarf chimpanzee, and Romanian climate was tropical - and safely in warm caves outlasted all subsequent ice ages , more and more troglomorfiruya that is adapting to underground life and "ethereal" atmosphere.
Blind Spider Agraecina cristiani patrols touch surface part of the cave in search of springtails and woodlice. The inhabitants of the caves are blind and are guided by touch and smell (or rather, the chemical senses - smell in invertebrates often inseparable from the taste), as well as catching the slightest vibration stone, air or water.

At the bottom of the food chain are movilskoy autotrophic bacteria - here they perform the same role that the plants on the surface - that is, make the minerals in organic matter, but not at the expense of sunlight and oxidizing hydrogen sulfide. As a result, the cycle of reactions of organic sulfur precipitates and bacteria get the energy for the synthesis of organic matter from carbon dioxide and water.
The productivity of this ecosystem is quite high: on a square meter, researchers counted fifteen hundred springtails. They were hunted blind spiders, close relatives are - sighted - now are found in the Canary Islands, which gives us an idea of ​​European climate in the Pliocene.
Spider crawling on the calcite crystals.
Left: centipede Arheboreoiulus sp. crawling in the dark looking for food. Right: land woodlouse Armadillidium tabacarui.
The largest predator movilskoy ecosystems - centipede Criptops.

Aquatic species Movil live mainly in the upper desyatisantimetrovom layer below the surface, more or less saturated with oxygen from the air.The following may be only anaerobes. Underwater views Movil changed compared with their counterparts from the larger world is smaller than the land, and among them, only 25% versus 75% endemic species of land movilskih troglodytes. This suggests that the message of the cave with sea or river water was interrupted later than the message from the surface land.
Snails, extremely resistant to hydrogen sulfide, eat a bacterial film on the water surface. These unique shellfish are the main consumers in the ecosystem of the cave Movil.
Water scorpion Nepa anophthalma (right - in the nymph stage) - another endemic Movil. He preys on crustaceans and insects, and lives mostly in water.
Water scorpion in his element. Seen from above the lower surface of the bacterial mat - they look like wet wipes and kept on life support bubbles.
Carnivorous leeches, one of the most spectacular creatures of the cave Movil, eat snails, worms and other invertebrates.