Cave and Karst Biota Modeling in the Appalachian LCC - Predicted troglobiotic crayfish in sampled 20km grid cells

We developed spatial summary (GIS) layers for a study of factors influencing the distribution of cave and karst associated fauna within the Appalachian Landscape Conservation Cooperative region, one of 22 public-private partnerships established by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to aid in developing landscape scale solutions to conservation problems (https://lccnetwork.org/lcc/appalachian). We gathered occurrence data on cave-limited terrestrial and aquatic troglobiotic species from a variety of sources within the Appalachian LCC region covering portions of 15 states. Occurrence records were developed from the scientific literature, existing biodiversity databases, personal records of the authors, museum accessions, state Natural Heritage programs, and The Nature Conservancy (for Tennessee). Occurrence records were identified by location and translated into a GIS database. Although the precise locations cannot be made public due the sensitivity of the information, data sharing agreements, and restrictions under the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act of 1988, we summarized the data spatially using a coarse 20x20km vector grid. We used these occurence records, summarized at the 20x20km grid resolution in statistical modeling to examine physical factors predictive of cave dwelling fauna. Spatial summaries were developed for all cave dwelling species in our database where we had location coordinates for nine faunal groups (five terrestrial and four aquatic) that are common components of terrestrial and aquatic cave communities: ground beetles (Carabidae), millipedes, pseudoscorpions, spiders, and springtails for terrestrial species groups, and amphipods (Crangonyctidae and Gammaridae), isopods (Asellidae), crayfishes (Cambaridae), and fishes (Amblyopsidae) for aquatic species groups.