Diario de peterswart

Trip Date: 2023-11-05
The objective of this trip was to see what lives in Entrance Zone of Egyptian Cave

Egyptian Cave

Egyptian Cave is large, open chamber. The whole cave is mostly in the twilight zone, with the possible exception of a low, sandy passage that heads towards Blue Disa Cave. The passage was not investigated on this trip.

Water was dripping from the ceiling at the back of the main chamber, and there was a shallow pool, filled by the drops falling from the ceiling. I did not see any life in the pool. The cave is very polluted. Broken glass, plastic and old zinc carbon batteries can be found throughout the cave.

The whole cave is closely coupled to the surface environment, and a lot of organic material falls into the entrance from the trees that surround the entrance.

I expected to find Paramelita and planaria in the pool, but did not. This may be because it is fed by drips from the ceiling, rather than water flowing into the pool. This may be different in winter.

I did find:

• 17x Cave Crickets, 4 in the passage under the entrance, and 13 near the pool
• 1x small Phyxelidid Spider. The head+abdomen together were about 8mm long. I thought it was a small False-violin spider, but was corrected.
• 3x Spermophora peninsulae All three where quite small.
• 1x Another spider. Small whole spider about 3mm.
• 1x Another spider. Very small whole spider was less than 1mm. No picture.
• 2x Mosquitoes? Not sure about this. They looked like mosquitoes, but I did not catch one.
• 1x harvestman It looks quite small, and the legs appear to be transparent.
• 1x snail This is probably fell into the cave along with the dead leaves it was on.

Trip Date: 2023-11-11
The objective of this trip was to see what lives in Johalvin Cave, Kalk Bay Mountains

Egyptian Cave

Popped on at Eyptian Cave to look for a missing coffee mug. Did not find the mug, but found tweezers I left behind last week.

I found:

• 8x Spermophora peninsulae within 0.5m x 0.5 m, appeared to be sharing the same web
• Small white amphipod
• A bristletail close to the entance.
• I could NOT find the mosquitos I saw last week

Johalvin Cave

Johalvin Cave is an enlarge crack under the floor of a tree filled alcove. The floor of the cave is between 4m and 6m below the floor of the alcove. Most of the cave receives some filtered light for most of the day, while there are some small permanently dark areas at the back of the cave.

Water drips into the cave from the ceiling, and runs out through a narrow passage towards Commemoration Hall Cave, and Broken Pot Grotto.

Most of the cave can thus be considered to be an Transistion Zone. Under the sky light entrance, there is a lot of rotting leaf material and any animals in this area could have fallen into the cave. I spent 4.5 hours in this relatively small cave, and found the following:

I found:

• 27x Cave Crickets
• 5x False violin spiders. Some lived very close (overlapping webs) with similar sized Phyxelididae spiders
• lots of other spiders
• 3x bristletails
• bat droppings (very old)
• Moths
• 1x Planarian (No photo)
• 1x harvestman
• 2 snails

The soil under the sky light is full of life. Colembola, diplura, symphyla, earthworms, centipedes, isopods, amphipods and much more. All of these are too small to photograph with my current gear.