18 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
Series 4, Volume 64, Supplement 1 
from 1953 to 1973, in which Richard E. Graham published numerous ecological studies about 
California cave life (Graham 1960a-b, 1962a-e, 1963a-b, 1966a-b, 1967, 1968a-b, 1969a-c). 
Founding members of CRA included Arthur Lange, Richard E. Graham, and Raymond 
deSaussure, who discovered and studied many new caves and cave animals. In 1959, Graham dis¬ 
covered the cave scorpion, Uroctonus grahami, and the cave pseudoscorpion, Pseudogarypus 
spelaeus, in Samwel Cave. In 1960-1961, Graham discovered a cave millipede, Opiona siliquae, 
in Fault Rock Cave, Mendocino Co.; the spider, Nesticus sodanus, in Soda Springs Cave, Plumas 
Co.; and Graham’s cave amphipod, Stygobromus grahami, in caves of Calaveras County (Causey 
1963; Gertsch and Soleglad 1972; Holsinger 1974; Benedict and Malcolm 1978a-b; Gertsch 
1984). In 1963, Graham discovered the cave harvestman, Banksula grahami, in Moaning Cave, 
Calaveras Co., and the cave pseudoscorpion, Fissilicreagris imperialis, in Empire Cave (Santa 
Cruz Co.) (Briggs and Ubick 1981; Muchmore and Cokendolpher 1995). 
Founding members of the Western Speleological Institute included Bill Halliday, Raymond de 
Saussure, and Arthur Lange. This Institute was involved in many speleological studies. An exam¬ 
ple was their partnership with Phil Orr of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, and they 
assisted the Museum in archaeological excavations in Calaveras Co. and the Channel Islands (Orr 
1951a, 1952a-b; Quick 1979; Danehy 2003). In 1962, Bill Halliday published the controversial, 
but important “Caves of California,” which included many observations of animals found in caves 
and the first grouping of caves by a physiographic system (Halliday 1962). 
Two important studies on the reproductive cycles and natural histories of bats were performed 
in the 1950s: one by Robert Orr, a curator at the California Academy of Sciences, on the Pallid Bat, 
Antrozous pallidas (Orr 1954); and the other by scientists at U.C. Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate 
Zoology on Townsend’s Big-Eared Bat ( Corynorhinus townsendii townsendii ) (Pearson et al. 
1952). The Pearson study was also important because it was one of the first papers to document the 
decline of several bat colonies from scientific activities (banding and specimen collection). In the 
1980s, U.C. Berkeley biologists, Dixie Pierson and Bill Rainey, started surveying bats, and in the 
decades that followed they documented the decline of Townsend’s Big-Eared Bat, primarily due to 
habitat disturbance. Until recently this bat was under consideration for listing as an endangered 
species by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. 
During the 1950s and 1960s, two entomologists at the University of California at Davis’ 
Bohart Museum of Entomology, L. Smith and R. Schuster, made extensive collections of diplurans 
(japygids and campodeids) throughout California, and discovered many new subterranean species 
in the genera Campodea, Hecajapyx, Holjapyx, and Nanojapyx (Graening et al. 2014). John 
Funkhouser, a curatorial assistant at Stanford’s Natural History Museum, published a checklist of 
the salamanders in California’s caves (Funkhouser 1951). 
Despite all of this published research on California’s caves, the richness of the State’s cave 
fauna was still not fully appreciated. The speleologist G. Nicholas Sullivan listed only eight troglo- 
bites from California in his national checklist of cave animals (Nicholas Sullivan 1960). 
At the beginning of 1960s, Bruce Rogers and Thomas Briggs began their lifelong study of Cal¬ 
ifornia caves. USGS geologist Bruce Rogers, although focused primarily on cave geology and cave 
exploration, facilitated many biological studies of California caves over five decades. With arach- 
nologist Thomas Briggs, Rogers described the fauna and flora in caves of the Sierra Nevada 
(Briggs and GPC 1975). Briggs began studying California caves when he was an instructor at 
Galileo High School, and continued as an associate researcher in the Department of Entomology 
at the California Academy of Sciences. Briggs specialized in harvestmen, but he also made impor¬ 
tant contributions to other arachnid orders, and trained many students to become productive taxon¬ 
omists. With former student and fellow arachnologist, Vincent Lee, Briggs discovered Banksula 
