Abstract
Abstract Caves are peculiar ecosystems; they are most often small, isolated habitats that lack the energy that sunlight provides. Cave-adapted species, isolated from epigean (i.e., surface) selection pressures, have been discovered with aphotic adaptations like blindness, depigmentation, and enhanced extra-optic sensory systems. This evolutionary process, however, only occurs in a fraction of cave ecosystems. Many cave species, especially those in tropical latitudes, occur with epigean conspecifics with ongoing gene flow and epigean migration. This includes populations of the amblypygid Phrynus longipes (Pocock 1894), which occur in both epigean and cave environments. I hypothesized that cave and epigean populations exhibit behavioral variation to meet the selection pressures of their respective environments. I conducted open-arena and interaction behavioral assays to test for behavioral variation between populations. Assays revealed that cave and epigean amblypygids exhibited environment-specific behavio...
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