BETWEEN LIGHT AND DARKNESS: THE ROUND-TRIP OF SURFACE AND SUBTERRANEAN ANIMALS

Caves are extreme environments, this definition is mostly due to the absence of sunlight that limits the abundance of trophic resources in this environment. The animals that live there, in order to exploit of this ecosystem, must show particular adaptations such as an extremely reduced metabolism, the absence of eyes and the lack of pigmentation. These adaptations are still considered by many authors as an evolutionary dead end. In practice; an animal that has evolved to exploit the cave environment can not perform the reverse process and will never re-colonize the external environment. The main purpose of this thesis was to verify whether this theory was correct.