Caves and their Faunas in Florida and South Georgia 



(Klimaszewski and Peck 1986). Peck's inventory of Florida caves 

 included three collembolans, three orthopterans, six beetles, two opilionids, 

 five spiders, one millipede, and one centipede (Peck 1970). 



David S. Lee, then a student at Florida Southern College, started 

 to visit caves in Alachua, Citrus, and Jackson counties, Florida, in 

 1965 (D. S. Lee, personal communication, North Carolina State Museum 

 of Natural Science). Between 1965 and 1970, he discovered many 

 new biologically significant sites, particularly in northwest Florida, 

 and made several important collections, one of which was the first 

 and only ovigerous female Palaemonetes cummingi from Squirrel Chimney. 

 He conveyed this specimen alive to Sheldon Dobkin at Florida Atlantic 

 University who successfully reared the developing larvae and published 

 the first description of the larval development for this species (Dobkin 

 1971). Merlin Tuttle also visited caves in Jackson County during this 

 same period in pursuit of gray bats (Myotis grisescens). Lee and Tuttle 

 combined their expertise and encouraged the Florida Park Service to 

 gate Old Indian Cave at Florida Caverns State Park to protect its 

 important bat colony (Lee and Tuttle 1970), and Lee later encouraged 

 them to limit access to other biologically sensitive caves in the Park. 

 Lee introduced Richard Franz to Florida biospeleology in 1967. On 

 one of the trips to Florida from Maryland, Lee and Franz visited 

 Squirrel Chimney in hopes of obtaining additional specimens of the 

 Squirrel Chimney Cave Shrimp, but instead, rescued a large eastern 

 diamondback rattlesnake {Crotalus adamanteus) from the bottom of 

 the vertical entry shaft (Franz 1968). Lee and Franz continued to 

 travel to west Florida between 1968 and 1970 to explore caves in 

 Jackson and Washington counties. Data from this period provided the 

 basis for studies on the predatory snail Euglandina rosea (Franz et al. 

 1971) and on the cave salamander, Haideotriton wallacei, and other 

 vertebrates in Jackson County caves (Lee \969a, \969b, 1969c, \969d, 

 1976). In 1970, they collected the first specimens of Cambarus cryptodytes 

 and Haideotriton wallacei from Pool Cave in Florida Caverns State 

 Park. The next year, Franz took Archie Carr to this cave and showed 

 him his first live Haideotriton since he had described the salamander 

 in 1939. In 1972, Franz joined the faculty of the Florida State Museum 

 (recent name change to Florida Museum of Natural History) at the 

 University of Florida where he currently continues his cave studies. 



Modern Period (1970-1992) — The discovery of a new troglobitic 

 crayfish in a Miami well in 1968 rekindled interest in the state's cave 

 crayfish fauna. This species, eventually described as Procambarus 

 milleri (Hobbs 1971), was the first new cave crayfish found in Florida 



