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PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
Series 4, Volume 64, Supplement 1 
from California in his national checklist of cave animals (Peck 1998). Peck also documented the 
diversity of fungus beetles (Leiodidae) in caves of California and the world in general. 
The contributions of several other taxonomists must be mentioned. From the 1960s to the pres¬ 
ent, William Shear, who began at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, has described hun¬ 
dreds of cave invertebrates, including nine new millipedes and harvestmen from California caves 
(Shear 1969, 1974, 2010, 2011). Rowland Shelley (North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sci¬ 
ences) has described hundreds of new species of millipedes and centipedes, including several cave 
millipedes from California caves (Shelley 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997a-b). In 2002, he published a 
checklist of the millipedes of California, which established California as a biodiversity hotspot for 
this invertebrate class (Shelley 2002). From the 1960s to the present, William Muchmore, an arach- 
nologist at the University of Rochester, has described the diversity of pseudoscorpions in caves in 
California and the world in general. 
Beginning in 1977, Rolf Aalbu, a coleopterist with the California Academy of Sciences, began 
extensive pitfall trapping in caves across the State. This method of collection revealed a different 
assemblage of invertebrates than those collected by the traditional method (opportunistically, by 
sight). Besides documenting the hidden diversity of caves in the southwestern desert regions, Aalbu 
discovered at least 14 new California cave species, including a new genus of cave pseudoscorpion, 
Tuberochernes aalbui, new cave spiders, and new genera and species of beetles (Muchmore 1984, 
1997; Aalbu and Andrews 1985, 1992; Aalbu 1990; Aalbu et al. 2012; Peck and Gnaspini 1997; 
Platnick and Ubick 2005; Triplehom 2007). 
Since the 1990s, aquatic entomologists from the U.C. Berkeley Essig Museum of Entomolo¬ 
gy have been documenting the biodiversity of springs in California. Cheryl Barr, for example, dis¬ 
covered new species of subterranean amphipods, Stygobromus cherylae, S. cowani, etc. in springs 
in the counties of Modoc, Napa, and Sonoma (Wang and Holsinger 2001; Graening et al. 2012). 
William Shepard discovered a new amphipod species in a spring in Sonoma Co., and has docu¬ 
mented many new aquatic invertebrates, especially riffle beetles, that are limited to springs in the 
arid regions of California (Shepard 1992; Graening et al. 2012). Other researchers continue to doc¬ 
ument this diverse and endangered fauna; recent genetic studies have shown that at least twelve 
species of amphipods in the genus Hyalella are limited to springs in the southern Great Basin 
ecoregion of California (Baldinger, Shepard, and Threloff 2000; Witt, Threloff, and Hebert 2006). 
In the early 2000s, Joel Despain, a National Park Service speleologist, organized and secured 
funding for bioinventories of the caves in California’s national parks. Under these contracts, cave 
biologist Jean Krejca and colleagues inventoried over 35 cave and spring sites in Sequoia, Kings 
Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks between 2002 and 2004, and accumulated nearly 6,000 tax¬ 
onomic observations and collections (Krejca 2006, 2007,2009a). Krejca’s team discovered 40 new 
invertebrates, including new genera and species of cave millipedes, Amplaria muiri, 
Pratherodesmus despaini, Taiyutyla loftinae, and Sequoiadesmus krejcae, a new species of Gryl- 
loblatta ice crawler, and a new cave pseudoscorpion, Parobisium yosemite (Shear and Krejca 2007, 
2011; Cokendolpher and Krejca 2010; Schoville and Graening 2013). The study was featured in 
National Geographic magazine (September 2007). In 2010, an intensive ecological study of Clough 
Cave was funded (Tobin et al. 2013). 
The National Park Service also funded biological studies of the caves of Lava Beds National 
Monument. This important cave region (Lava Flows North region, Medicine Lake highlands) 
received some previous studies and discoveries in the last century. In 1951, Joseph Kamp discov¬ 
ered the Monument’s endemic ice crawler, Grylloblatta gurneyi (Kamp 1963). In 1959, two species 
of cave diplurans ( Haplocampa ) were discovered by Vince Roth, who made other collections in the 
Monument’s caves (Graening et al. 2014). In the early 1970s, Peck reported the troglobitic milli- 
