Castleguard Cave (in Banff National Park) Other collections have been made from Dead Horse 

 Cave in Skamania Co , Washington and from an unknown location in the Flathead River System 

 near Kalispell, Flathead Co., Montana. Two of the specimens collected in 1977, now in the U.S. 

 National Museum collection, are a male and a female of this species; location of the other two 

 isopod specimens collected in 1977 is not known (J. J. Lewis pers. comm.). The 1999 material 

 will be deposited in the U.S. National Museum collection. The Dead Horse Cave collection is of 

 interest because the species was not included in a description of the cave ecology by Nixon 

 (1975), even though other aquatic cave invertebrates were noted. This seems to parallel events at 

 Algal Cave, where the isopod was not present in pools during some visits (see Campbell 1975, 

 Campbell et al. 1976). 



Amphipods (Class Crustacea) : The four amphipod specimens in 1999 were sent to Dr. 

 John R. Holsinger (Old Dominion University). Dr. Holsinger identified the amphipods as 

 Stygohromiis n. sp. (new species, in manuscript) of the huhhsi group, to be named ""g/aciaiis" 

 when the description is formally published. Currently the description is in the dissertation of 

 Daqing Wang (whose doctoral research is the systematics of western North American 

 Stygohromus). The 1999 collection included four sexually mature females, two of which were 

 ovigerous and the first seen for this species. The two specimens collected from Algal Cave on 

 25 August 1977 were not sexually mature, but the two collected from Zoo Cave on 27 August 

 1977 were nearly sexually mature females (J. R. Holsinger pers. comm.). One additional 

 specimen is known from an unnamed cave on Trail Creek in Flathead Co. (North Fork Flathead 

 River drainage) collected by Dr. Jack Stanford on 25 November 1980. Dr. Holsinger' s 

 collection numbers are H-1889 for the 1977 Algal Cave collection, H-1890 for the 1977 Zoo 

 Cave collection, and H-3900 for the 1999 Algal Cave collection. The 1999 material will be 

 listed as paratypes in the formal description. 



Oligochaete worm (Class Lumbriculida) : The one specimen of segmented worm 

 collected in 1999 from Algal Cave was sent to Dr. Mark J. Wetzel (Illinois Natural History 

 Survey). Dr. Wetzel identified the specimen as a member of the Family Lumbriculidae, but was 

 unable to identify it below that level. He is sending it to a colleague in California for additional 

 help. Any collection of additional specimens should be sent to some other authority, as Dr. 

 Wetzel is not an expert with this group. 



Planaria (Order Tricladida) : The three specimens of flatworms collected in 1999 were 

 placed directly in ethyl alcohol. This preservation technique ruins the specimens for future 

 identification. To quote Dr. Jerry J. Lewis, "If the flatworms were put in alcohol you can 

 probably give up immediately on trying to identifying them. Even when fixed properly 

 identifying them from preserved specimens is problematic. . . . If pigmented you might try using 

 [Kenk's] EPA key to identifying fresh, living specimens" (pers. comm). The individuals 

 collected were a light cream color, and appear superficially like illustrations ofPolyce/is (Family 

 Planariidae) in Nixon (1975). 



RECOMMENDATIONS 



The two worm species may not be cave forms, but this possibility will remain conjecture 

 until additional specimens are collected. It is suggested here that Algal Cave be revisited and 

 additional material be collected and submitted to appropriate authorities for species-level 

 determinations. Furthermore, Zoo Cave and Poia Lake Cave may also support an aquatic cave 



