Abstract
Whereas scientists interested in subterranean life typically insist that their research is exciting, adventurous, and important to answer general questions, this enthusiasm and potential often fade when the results are translated into scientific publications. This is because cave research is often written by cave scientists for cave scientists; thus, it rarely “leaves the cave”. However, the status quo is changing rapidly. We analysed 21,486 articles focused on subterranean ecosystems published over the last three decades and observed a recent, near-exponential increase in their annual citations and impact factor. Cave research is now more often published in non-specialized journals, thanks to a number of authors who are exploiting subterranean habitats as model systems for addressing important scientific questions. Encouraged by this positive trend, we here propose a few personal ideas for improving the generality of subterranean literature, including tips for framing broadly scoped research and making it accessible to a general audience, even when published in cave-specialized journals. Hopefully, this small contribution will succeed in condensing and broadcasting even further the collective effort taken by the subterranean biology community to bring their research “outside the cave”.
Highlights
Whether it is about birds or bugs, ants or antelopes, and no matter their ecology, systematics, or sexual behaviour, natural scientists tend to fall in love with the systems they study
Model systems are like a box of chocolate: you never know what you’re gonna get
Selecting a natural organism or system might be seen as a trade-off between subjective features making it appealing to study and objective features making it a good model. Since many of these features are not obvious when selecting a new model organism (Hedges 2002; Maher 2009; Alfred and Baldwin 2015), we cannot deny a certain role of luck in this choice when, for example, a favourite organism turns out to be ideal to tackle an important question or to develop a new method
Summary
Molecular Ecology Group, Water Research Institute (IRSA), National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Verbania Pallanza, Italy 2 Laboratory for Integrative Biodiversity Research (LIBRe), Finnish Museum of Natural History (LUOMUS), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland Academic editor: PeterTrontelj | Received 23 October 2020 | Accepted 27 October 2020 | Published 16 November 2020 http://zoobank.org/D2219EF4-CCE7-41D4-AB9C-98FBC5F82FE0 Citation: Mammola S, Martínez A (2020) Let research on subterranean habitats resonate! Subterranean Biology 36: 63–71. https://doi.org/10.3897/subtbiol.36.59960
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