Movile Cave · Mangalia · 2.5 million years without sun
The cave that lives without the sun
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18 metres under a field near Mangalia lies a cave with no natural entrance. It holds 52 invertebrate species, 37 found only here, fed by microbes that draw energy from sulfur and methane. Light has never entered.
2,500,000 years in a single descent
The counter starts in the year the cave sealed shut and runs to today. Our species is about 300,000 years old: the seal is more than 8 times older than us.
today
Years before today. The Quaternary seal: GESS Lab.
2,500,000 years ago
Clays and loess cover the Sarmatian limestones; Movile keeps no natural entrance. (GESS Lab, Brad et al. 2021)
2,000,000 years ago
Heleobia dobrogica, the cave's only snail, reaches its waters and never leaves. (Falniowski et al. 2008)
June 1986
A geological shaft breaks the ceiling 18 metres down. Cristian Lascu descends first. (Brad et al. 2021)
1996
Sarbu, Kane and Kinkle describe in Science the first chemosynthesis-based cave ecosystem.
June 1986: the drill breaks the ceiling
In a derelict quarry near Mangalia, a crew hunting a site for a power plant pushed a borehole into the Dobrogea ground. 18 metres under the field, the bit dropped into the void: below lay a narrow gallery, coated in clay, with no link to the surface.
The geologist Cristian Lascu descended first, down the survey shaft. Below waited total darkness, a constant 21 degrees and heavy air smelling of rotten eggs. The galleries crawled with eyeless, unpigmented creatures, many never seen before: spiders, isopods, leeches, a water scorpion.
The cave water carried nothing from outside: no food particles, none of the radioactive isotopes that reached Dobrogea's soils after the Chernobyl accident. It came from below, from 25,000-year-old spongy limestones, rising along a deep fault. (GeoERA, 2019)
Ten years later, a NASA team brought a mobile laboratory to Mangalia and studied the cave alongside the Romanian speleologists. (GeoERA, 2019)
The pools of warm, sulfidic water stink of rotten eggs or burnt rubber when you disturb them: hydrogen sulfide comes off.
Air you cannot breathe
Up top the air is nearly normal. In the air-bells below, researchers breathe through a scuba regulator, masks on. The values below are the ones measured there.
The air below, against the outside air
Each gas has its own scale: 7% is a third of 21%, and 0.03% is under 1% of 3.5%.
times more carbon dioxide than outside: 3.5% against 0.03%. Oxygen, meanwhile, falls to a third.
The measurements, briefly
| Where and what | How much |
|---|---|
| Oxygen, upper level | 19% |
| Oxygen, in the bells | 7% |
| Carbon dioxide, upper level | 1% |
| Carbon dioxide, in the bells | 3.5% |
| Methane | 1–2% |
| Temperature | 21 degrees |
| Humidity | about 100% |
| Hydrogen sulfide and ammonia | high concentrations |
Dissolved oxygen comes from the cave atmosphere and is spent at once oxidising sulfide and methane. (Brad et al. 2021)
Sulfuric acid gnaws the limestone and slowly widens the cave; the gnawing releases the carbon dioxide that fills the air. (Boden, quoted by GeoERA)
Below the first millimetre of water, oxygen is gone entirely. Deeper than a metre, the water flows at 5 litres a second. (Brad et al. 2021)
The sulfur eaters
No leaf, no ray: all food in Movile is made on the spot, from gases. Microbes oxidise sulfide, methane and ammonium, and their living mats feed everyone.
Three gases, one kitchen
The microbes' energy comes from oxidising these gases, delivered steadily by the thermomineral water. (Brad et al. 2021)
The food chain, in four links
The living mat
Microbial biofilms on water, walls and sediment: the base of the whole chain.
The grazers
The snail Heleobia dobrogica, hundreds strong on the lake banks; the isopods Trachelipus and Armadillidium; the amphipods Niphargus; the earthworms Helodrilus.
The small hunters
The pseudoscorpion Chthonius monicae, the small spiders, the predatory beetles: they hunt springtails, mites and isopod young.
The top predators
In the water: the scorpion Nepa anophthalma and the leech Haemopis caeca. On land: the centipede Cryptops speleorex, the spider Agraecina cristiani, the beetle Medon dobrogicus.
Food also comes from far away: the thermomineral water rises from 180–200 metres, from an aquifer of 50–100 square kilometres. The old wells of Mangalia and the sulfurous springs of the shore, 1–3 kilometres from the cave, open onto the same aquifer; some endemics live there too. (Brad et al. 2021)
37 species found nowhere else
Of the 52 invertebrate species, 21 live in water and 31 on land; 37 are endemic to the cave and its aquifer. Six of them below; the whole list underneath.
The king: Cryptops speleorex
A venomous 8–10 cm centipede, the cave's largest invertebrate. It roams the galleries for isopods, beetles and spiders. The name means “king of the cave”.
The water scorpion: Nepa anophthalma
Eyeless and unpigmented, it lurks under the lake surface, hidden between the asperities of the bank. Its prey: amphipods and isopods.
The leech: Haemopis caeca
It swims gracefully and sometimes dives deep; at the banks it hunts the Helodrilus earthworms of the sediment.
The snail: Heleobia dobrogica
The cave's only snail, arrived just over 2 million years ago. It grazes the biofilms in groups hundreds strong.
The pseudoscorpions: Roncus dragobete and Roncus ciobanmos
With neither eyes nor eye spots, neither as adults nor as nymphs. The small one, Chthonius monicae, catches only springtails and mites.
The isopod Armadillidium tabacarui
Up to 200 individuals per square metre in the Lake Room; its tiny neighbour, Caucasonethes vandeli pygmaeus, is about a millimetre long.
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The whole list: 53 entries from the GESS catalogue
The GESS Lab keeps the list of species met and described in the ecosystem; the Brad et al. 2021 census counts 52 invertebrate species, 37 endemic. The ★ star marks the endemics.
53 of 53
| No. | Species | Group | Endemic |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dendrocoelum obstinatum | flatworms | ★ |
| 2 | Panagrolaimus cf. thienemani | nematodes | ★ |
| 3 | Chronogaster troglodytes | nematodes | ★ |
| 4 | Udonchus tenuicaudatus | nematodes | |
| 5 | Poikilolaimus sp. | nematodes | |
| 6 | Monhystrella sp. | nematodes | |
| 7 | Habrotrocha rosa | rotifers | |
| 8 | Habrotrocha bidens | rotifers | |
| 9 | Haemopis caeca | annelids | ★ |
| 10 | Helodrilus n. sp. | annelids | ★ |
| 11 | Aeolosoma hyalinum | annelids | |
| 12 | Aeolosoma litorale | annelids | |
| 13 | Heleobia dobrogica | snails | ★ |
| 14 | Pseudocandona n. sp. | ostracods | ★ |
| 15 | Eucyclops graeteri scythicus | copepods | ★ |
| 16 | Tropocyclops prasinus | copepods | |
| 17 | Parapseudoleptomesochra italica | copepods | |
| 18 | Niphargus racovitzai | amphipods | ★ |
| 19 | Niphargus dancaui | amphipods | ★ |
| 20 | Asellus aquaticus infernus | isopods | ★ |
| 21 | Caucasonethes n. sp. | isopods | ★ |
| 22 | Haplophthalmus movilae | isopods | ★ |
| 23 | Trachelipus troglobius | isopods | ★ |
| 24 | Armadillidium tabacarui | isopods | ★ |
| 25 | Chthonius monicae | pseudoscorpions | ★ |
| 26 | Chthonius borissketi | pseudoscorpions | ★ |
| 27 | Roncus dragobete | pseudoscorpions | ★ |
| 28 | Roncus ciobanmos | pseudoscorpions | ★ |
| 29 | Carniella brignolii | spiders | |
| 30 | Palliduphantes constantinescui | spiders | ★ |
| 31 | Agraecina cristiani | spiders | ★ |
| 32 | Kryptonesticus georgescuae | spiders | ★ |
| 33 | Hahnia caeca | spiders | ★ |
| 34 | Dysdera hungarica | spiders | |
| 35 | Labidostoma motasi | mites | ★ |
| 36 | Geophilus alpinus | centipedes | |
| 37 | Clinopodes flavidus carynthiacus | centipedes | |
| 38 | Cryptops speleorex | centipedes | ★ |
| 39 | Symphylella sp. | symphylans | |
| 40 | Archiboreoiulus serbansarbui | millipedes | ★ |
| 41 | Strongylosoma jaqueti | millipedes | |
| 42 | Pygmarrhopalites pygmaeus | springtails | ★ |
| 43 | Onychiurus bogheani | springtails | ★ |
| 44 | Heteromurus nitidus | springtails | |
| 45 | Oncopodura vioreli | springtails | ★ |
| 46 | Plusiocampa isterina | diplurans | ★ |
| 47 | Plusiocampa euxina | diplurans | ★ |
| 48 | Medon dobrogicus | beetles | ★ |
| 49 | Tychobythinus sulphydricus | beetles | ★ |
| 50 | Decumarellus sarbui | beetles | ★ |
| 51 | Bryaxis dolosus | beetles | ★ |
| 52 | Clivina subterranea | beetles | ★ |
| 53 | Nepa anophthalma | true bugs | ★ |
No species answers the search.
The cave at true scale
Movile is a horizontal maze 240 metres long, with no natural entrance: the only access is an 18-metre shaft, shut by an air-tight gate. The section below is drawn for this page, at true vertical scale, from the published dimensions.
The 240 metres are the development of all galleries, not one straight line.
The closed door: why you cannot enter
Movile is not a cave to visit. Three reasons keep the gate shut:
The law shuts it
The cave belongs to the Natura 2000 site ROSCI0114 and is open only to scientific research, on authorised permissions. (Brad et al. 2021)
The shaft guards it
The only entrance is the 18-metre shaft, shut by an air-tight gate. The GESS Lab allows only a few entries a year, so as not to disturb the ecosystem.
It is fragile
The groundwater feeds it and can poison it: intensive farming in south-eastern Dobrogea and the spread of Mangalia threaten the aquifer with pollution. (Brad et al. 2021)
The deep timeline: 5.5 million years in 8 stops
From the cave's birth to the 2021 census: 8 stops, 5,500,000 years.
- 5.5 M
The cave is born
Speleogenesis begins in southern Dobrogea: waters carve the void in the Sarmatian limestones. (GESS Lab)
- 2.5 M
The seal
Quaternary clays and loess cover the limestones; Movile keeps no natural entrance. (GESS Lab, Brad et al. 2021)
- 2 M
The snail arrives
Heleobia dobrogica reaches the cave waters; the estimated isolation runs just over 2 million years. (Falniowski et al. 2008)
- 1986
The drill
In June, a geological shaft breaks the ceiling 18 metres down; Cristian Lascu descends first.
- 1992
The first description
Sarbu and Popa describe the chemosynthesis-based ecosystem, in a biospeleology volume.
- 1996
Science
Sarbu, Kane and Kinkle publish the first cave ecosystem described as chemosynthesis-based.
- 2020
The king
Vahtera, Stoev and Akkari describe Cryptops speleorex, the 8–10 cm centipede, in ZooKeys.
- 2021
The census
Brad, Iepure and Sarbu publish the updated list: 52 invertebrate species, 37 endemic.
The dive: who eats whom
You are in the Lake Room, mask on. Six statements about the food chain: true or false?
-
1
Lake Room · water edge
The living mat on the water feeds hundreds of snails.
See the answer
True. Groups hundreds strong of the snail Heleobia dobrogica graze the biofilms on the lake banks. (Brad et al. 2021)
-
2
Lake Room · under the surface
The eyeless water scorpion lurks for prey under the lake surface.
See the answer
True. Nepa anophthalma hides between the asperities of the bank and catches amphipods and isopods.
-
3
Lake Room · in the deep
The Movile leeches live on bat blood.
See the answer
False. No mammal lives in the cave; Haemopis caeca hunts the Helodrilus earthworms of the sediment.
-
4
Lower level · galleries
The king of the cave is a venomous 8–10 cm centipede.
See the answer
True. Cryptops speleorex, described in 2020, is the largest invertebrate in Movile and its top predator.
-
5
Air-bells · walls
The Movile pseudoscorpions have large eyes, for the dark.
See the answer
False. They have neither eyes nor eye spots, neither as adults nor as nymphs. (Curcic et al. 1993)
-
6
Lake Room · floor
One square metre of cave can hold 200 isopods.
See the answer
True. Armadillidium tabacarui forms populations of up to 200 individuals per square metre in the Lake Room.
You have answered nothing yet.
Sources and method
Every fact about the cave comes from the primary papers and the lab: Brad, Iepure and Sarbu 2021 for dimensions, chemistry, the food web and the census; Sarbu, Kane and Kinkle 1996 for chemosynthesis; the GESS pages and catalogue for history and species. The list below groups them by theme, with links.
Every number shows its working: 21 plus 31 is 52; 37 of 52 is 71.2%; 2,500,000 divided by 300,000 is more than 8; 3.5% against 0.03% is more than 100 times.
The section, the bars and the pseudoscorpion are drawn for this page, from the published values. No published figure is copied. Details marked as secondary (the NASA lab, the missing Chernobyl isotopes) come from GeoERA, not primary papers.
The cave and its chemistry
- Brad, Iepure, Sarbu (2021). The Chemoautotrophically Based Movile Cave Groundwater Ecosystem, a Hotspot of Subterranean Biodiversity. Diversity 13(3):128: the June 1986 shaft, the 240-metre maze, the Lake Room and air-bells, the gases, the 52/37 census, the food web, Natura 2000 ROSCI0114
- Sarbu, Kane, Kinkle (1996). A Chemoautotrophically Based Cave Ecosystem. Science 272(5270):1953–1955: the first description of a cave living on chemosynthesis
- GESS Lab, Mangalia. Movile Cave, a unique ecosystem: Lascu 1986, the 5.5-million-year formation vs the 2.5-million-year seal, the air-tight gate, a few entries a year
- GESS Lab. List of invertebrate species encountered and described in the Movile Cave ecosystem (2020): the full catalogue on the page
- Cetean, V. (2019). Spectacular creatures in a poisonous sulphidic atmosphere: Movile cave. GeoERA (Geological Institute of Romania): the power-plant survey, the missing Chernobyl isotopes, the NASA mobile lab
The animals
- Vahtera, Stoev, Akkari (2020). Five million years in the darkness: a new troglomorphic Cryptops species from Movile Cave. ZooKeys 1004:1–26: Cryptops speleorex, the 8–10 cm top predator, the “King of the cave”
- Curcic, Poinar, Sarbu (1993). New and little-known Chthoniidae and Neobisiidae species from Movile Cave. Bijdragen tot de Dierkunde: Roncus dragobete and R. ciobanmos, with neither eyes nor eye spots
- Decu, Gruia, Keffer, Sarbu (1994). Stygobiotic Waterscorpion, Nepa anophthalma, n. sp., from a Sulfurous Cave in Romania. Annals of the Entomological Society of America 87(6):755–761
- Falniowski, Szarowska, Sirbu, Hillebrand, Baciu (2008). Heleobia dobrogica and the estimated time of its isolation. Molluscan Research 28(3):165–170: the snail's isolation, just over 2 million years
- Fox-Skelly, J. (2015). The bizarre beasts living in Romania's poison cave. BBC Earth: the discovery scene, the eyeless fauna, the snail estimate (page since archived)
Images
- Cryptops speleorex, holotype · Varpu Vahtera, Pavel Stoev, Nesrine Akkari · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
- The flooded gallery in section, drawing · Rtsen08 · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
- Aquatic invertebrates from Movile · Traian Brad, Sanda Iepure and Serban M. Sarbu · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
- Nepa anophthalma · Traian Brad, Sanda Iepure and Serban M. Sarbu · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
- The king's head, under the microscope · Vahtera V, Stoev P, Akkari N (2020) Five million years in the darkness: A new troglomorphic species of Cryptops Leach, 1814 (Chilopoda, Scolopendromorpha) from Movile Cave, Romania. ZooKeys 1004: 1-26. · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons