SUMMARY 1. This paper is an introduction to and overview of a special issue on groundwater ecology with a focus on biodiversity assessment and conservation. The subterranean environment harbours unique biological communities of remarkable diversity, comprisingboth microorganisms and micro-, meio- and macrofauna. This biodiversity of ground waters remains poorly known compared to that of freshw…
SUMMARY: 1. This paper is a synthesis of a special issue on groundwater biodiversity with a focus on obligate subterranean species, the stygobionts. The series of papers constitutes a great leap forward in assessing and understanding biodiversity patterns because of the use of large quantitative data sets obtained over a broad geographic scale. They also represent a conceptual shift, away fro…