Last week we were doing the first expedition into the Karst caves around Ljubljana. While they are famous for their beautiful geological formations, the dark and cold waters of these caves are also the habitat of the Proteus anguinus, also called “Human Fish”. But is there more other life down there? To check this we went for a µ-Cave Safari, equipped with DIY laser-projectors, MobileLabs, plankton-nets, starving low-nutritious agar culture plates and other fun stuff to carry around in the muddy holes.
See some impressions on our meet-up/BioTehna page
To the Cave
After we packed all our gears, got a last bite of some mesni burek and put on our cave-man shoes we headed towards the cave “Vranja Jama”, crossing the Planinskega polja, near Logatec, our cave sherpa Doms’ hometown. We were eager to explore what microscopic lifeforms there might be…
“We suspect that, because limited but chemically complex nutrients enter the cave system, very few microbial species are capable of encoding all the necessary uptake and catabolic reactions to support growth. To overcome this limitation, selfish competition for resources is replaced by cooperative and mutualistic associations, such as have been seen in biofilm communities.”
– from “What’s Up Down There? Microbial Diversity in Caves”, Barton et al
Temporary VJ Lab-in-a-Cave
What we found
Of course, next to investigating the microscopic life of the cave, we also saw the “Human Fish” (german name is “Grottenolm”) and we wont hide our brilliantly sharp picture of it :-). Besides that, we found loooaads of earthworms in the mud, moths, spider webs, some fungi and bones of various animals (maybe bats).
Back to the “OUTSIDE…”
“Last week we were doing the first expedition into the Karst caves around Ljubljana. While they are famous for their beautiful geological formations, the dark and cold waters of these caves are also the habitat of the Proteus anguinus, also called “Human Fish”. But is there more other life down there? To check this we went for a µ-Cave Safari, equipped with DIY laser-projectors, MobileLabs, plankton-nets, starving low-nutritious agar culture plates and other fun stuff to carry around in the muddy holes.
See more info on http://hackteria.org/?p=2734”
From Cave µ-Safari in Vranja Jama. Posted by Marc Dusseiller Dusjagr on 9/02/2013 (24 items)
- On the way to Vranja Jama, crossing Planinskega polja, near Logatec
- Entering the cave…. into the dark and cold.
- The environment already changed completely in the entrance of the cave. Last pioneeri…
- Setting up the camp, first thing to do…. let’s make some coffee!
- Preparing the temporary VJ-Lab-in-a-Cave.
- Audio-Visual setup complete with sound system, DIY laser projector and DIY microscope…
- Daša Slavič is preparing the microscope.
- It’s aliiiiiiiiive!
- More larger lifeforms found aswell. Moths, spiders, molds and more.
- Our cave sherpa and camera man, all in original cavemen staaayle resolution of 172×13…
- Marc Dusseiller Dusjagr is examining some molds…
- Into the mud. What is in that little sifon of water?
- There it is! The Human Fish! Not the best picture… and slowly it moved away from th…
- Mojca takes some soil samples.
- … which is full of earthworms.
- Matja fishes for some plankton… there must be, or what should the proteus eat?
- Going out again.
- The Cave µ-Explorers made it ou safely and enjoying the warmth of the outside again.
- Let’s check some of that plankon in Planinskega polja aswell
- More plankton fishing…
- … and even more plankton fishing. Testing our new DIY plankton nets, made from &quo…
- Heading back.
- Post-µ-Safari sample inspection in the park in Ljubljana.
- Artificial cave conditions to culture our specimen bcak in the BioTehna lab.
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