A friend of mine (Mick) is a professional cave biologist and during the
winter months I sometimes accompany him with his research. Right now he
is working on a project to assess the impact on cave fauna in caves that are open to the public.  Round Spring Cave in Shannon County Missouri is one of the six caves being monitored and is the cave we visited just the other day. Round Spring Cave is gated and locked but it is open to the public by means of guided tours held daily throughout the summer months by the National Park Service. Normally grotto salamanders are hard to come by but it seems our visit landed during a peak time for grotto salamander viewing. I was told that if we had visited a month or two earlier we would have found mostly cave salamanders (E. lusifuga) as this is the time they are laying eggs in the caves. The unusual feature of this circumstance is that the egg laying is taking place in quiet pools with deep mud, rather than under rocks in flowing streams, as had been assumed to always be the case. The main evidence is that adults have been observed diving into the mud and are almost always mud-covered, then shortly after the occurrence of adults in the pools peaks, newly hatched larvae start to appear in the same pools, and gradually build in numbers. Mick has not demonstrated for certain that these are E. lucifuga larvae, but it looks like a good bet. Anyhow, when these larva appear the grotto salamanders soon show up, presumably to feed on the cave salamander larva. In the first photo you can see an adult grotto salamander in a pool along with what's thought to be a cave salamander larva. The second photo is of a darker (newly metamorphed?) adult found among larva in another pool.
 
I was also shown some remains (bones) of the extinct short-faced bear in a passage of the cave that is off limits to tours.
 
Most exciting was the discovery of an undescribed beetle; only the second troglobitic beetle ever found in the Ozarks. Sue (Mick’s wife) had found the first only months earlier in another Shannon County cave, and Mick had been telling me about it on the drive to the cave. Under the microscope it was obvious that the beetle had evolved a complete lack of eyes.
 
Bat Species Seen:
Big Brown Bat
Eastern Pipistrelle
Indiana Bat

Gray Bat