Project Summary:

       Methods for conservation of highly degraded or polluted environments and preventing the extinction of threatened species are necessary in the conditions of extending the human impact upon the natural environment. Because of the particularities of biotic and abiotic factors and of its trophic dependence on other autotrophic ecosystems, the subterranean environment is extreme and highly vulnerable environments. Considering the increasing anthpropic pressure, we assist to an accentuated degradation of subterranean ecosystems, which determined the restraining or even the retreat of specific fauna. In order to prevent the extinction of vulnerable populations it is essential to be aware of the mechanisms by which these respond to the modifications of environmental factors. For this, in the frame of the project, we intend to establish, by an interdisciplinary study, the degree of chemical, organic or biological pollution of key subterranean environments, for which an answer from the subterranean organisms can be recorded and modalities by which they respond. In this way, studies of ecophysiology and microbiology have a series of implications for the conservation of the natural patrimony, being known that abiotic and biotic factors reciprocally influence and intensify each other. Presently, in Romania no study has been undertaken for explaining the biolithogenic role of algal communities and cultivable microorganisms utilization of sequencing techniques for ribosomal DNA and of ND1 gene, along with methods of classical systematics will extend the researches undertaken in order to identify cryptic taxa or for establishing the phylogenetic relationships of some populations of subterranean microorganisms, invertebrates or vertebrates. Evaluating the quality of the environment based on the fragility of abiotic components and vulnerability of cave species will assure a scientific basis, founded on the problematic of subterranean ecosystem's conservation.