Invertebrate Cave Fauna 
7 
allied with those of the adjoining Eastern Highland Rim of the Interior 
Low Plateaus. 
A few caves are also recorded from the Blue Ridge province south 
and southeast of the study area in the higher mountains of southeastern 
Tennessee (Barr 1961) and in western North Carolina (Cato Holler, Jr., 
pers. comm.). With the exception of those in Blount County, Tenn., 
however, most of these caves consist of fissure passages in non-carbonate 
rocks. 
Faunistic Relationships 
For the most part, the cave-limited faunas of the Appalachian 
Valley and karst islands on the eastern side of the Appalachian Plateau 
differ significantly from those of the Interior Low Plateaus and western 
margin of the Cumberland Plateau. Since many genera with troglobites 
(see definition under “Methods”) are shared by these two major cave 
regions, this difference is considerably greater on the species level. 
However, differences in the cave faunas of the two regions are less 
pronounced in southern Tennessee, northeastern Alabama, and 
northwestern Georgia, where only short distances separate cave areas in 
the Appalachian Valley, Cumberland Plateau, and Eastern Highland 
Rim. Farther north in Kentucky and Virginia- West Virginia, where the 
distance between the cave areas of the Interior Low Plateaus-Cumberland 
Plateau and Appalachian Valley-eastern Appalachian Plateau is much 
greater (see Fig. 3), the faunas are more different. 
The ranges of a number of troglobitic species in the study area 
extend into adjoining cave areas on the north, south, and west. However, 
to the north the number of troglobitic species decreases significantly in 
Maryland and Pennsylvania, where the cave-limited fauna is very sparse 
(see Franz and Slifer 1971, Holsinger 1976). Even farther north, in the 
glaciated cave area of New York, the only known troglobite is the 
amphipod crustacean Stygobromus allegheniensis (Holsinger 1967a, 
1978). 
West of the study area in the adjoining cave areas of eastern West 
Virginia, the cave-limited fauna is comparable in diversity to that in 
western Virginia, and there is a strong taxonomic affinity among many 
troglobitic species throughout much of the two-state area (cf., Holsinger 
et al. 1976). There is also a strong affinity between certain cave-limited 
species in the study area and those of Pine Mountain, a karst island in 
the Appalachian Plateau about 16 km northwest of the study area in 
southeastern Kentucky and northwestern Campbell County, Tenn. 
Much of the cave-limited fauna in the Appalachian Valley of 
eastern Tennessee south and southwest of the study area has not been 
documented in the same detail as that of areas north and west of the 
study area. But those observations and literature records that are 
