Devil's Pit Cave - Transition Zone

Trip Date: 2024-02-11

The objective of this trip was to see what lives in the transition zone at the bottom of Devil's Pit lower entrance.

To get into the the lower entrance of Devil's Pit, you negotiate a 2m drop through a boulder choke. This is in a small copse of trees, so there is a lot of plant debris in the first section. Near the bottom of the boulder choke a sandy passage runs off towards the bottom of the main pit via 'Creepy Corridor' , and a choke continues down into 'Free Drinks Saloon'. There is direct sunlight at the bottom of the choke, but 'Creepy Corridor' and 'Free Drinks Saloon' are mostly, but not completely dark. My search concentrated on these most dark sections.

Apart from the cave crickets, most of the things I saw were spiders.

One wall of creepy corridor is covered with fine plant roots, and running freely over these roots was a small Pholcidae spider. It attempted to avoid my torch light and was very difficult to photograph.

On a piece of rotting log on the floor of the cave, I found a Phyxelididae spider

At the darkest end of Creepy Corridor, an Izithunzi capense spider. This was one of the lighter coloured specimens. The Izithunzi in the lower part of the cave were much darker in colour.

There few also a few very small Phyxelididae spiders running around on the humus on the floor of the cave.

Free Drinks Saloon is the lowest part of the entrance, and a stream issues from a narrow passage 1.5m above the camber floor, and disappears into another narrow passage entrance at floor level. Someone has left a number of 2litre plastic ice-cream containers to store water. Most of the containers collecting water that drips from the ceiling, but one container collects water as the stream falls from the upper passage. A Taeniochauliodes fuscus (Table Mountain Fishfly) larva was trapped in this container. It was about 35mm long, and moved very sluggishly.

There was another Phyxelididae spider amongst the rocks on the floor. This spider spent most of the time trying to escape me by moving around upside down under its web.

Spermophora peninsulae occurred through out the area under examination. The spiders that were inside the very dark areas of the cave each occurred in its own web. The same species was found in webs around the entrance to the cave, in direct sun light. These spiders in the direct sun light often appeared to share a common web, with up to 4 spiders of similar size in the same web.

I searched for, but did not find any harvestmen.

Publicado el febrero 11, 2024 12:45 TARDE por peterswart