Comparative Overview of Cave Biodiversity Research Activities in Southern Africa: Insights from Botswana, Namibia and South Africa

Subterranean habitats in general and caves in particular harbour a unique set of organisms that are adapted to the dark and nutrient-limited environment. The high selection pressure and limited geneflow between semi-isolated caves have generally resulted in a high level of endemicity among the depauperate cave fauna. The cave fauna is vulnerable to a range of anthropogenic factors including mining and excessive usage as show caves. The awareness of the need for conservation of this unique habitats has been growing in recent years, but not uniformly. In this paper, we use Web of Science to look at how the research output in the ecology and conservation area in Southern Africa compares to the rest of the world. We find that while Africa as a whole has a disproportionality low publication rate, Southern Africa is relatively well represented, though driven exclusively by South Africa. However, unlike the development in the rest of the world the number of publications has not risen much in recent years and is mainly focussed on vertebrates. In this paper, we discuss the reason for this discrepancy and use well known show caves in the region as case-studies to identify research priorities and promote more awareness of the conservation need of caves in Southern Africa.