“…This impediment (also known as 'Linnean shortfall'; Hortal et al, 2015) is especially problematic in studies focusing on community structure and functioning. It is particularly severe for tropical areas, whose subterranean fauna were largely unknown until very recently (e.g., Alvarenga et al, 2021;Trajano & Bichuette, 2010;Trajano et al, 2016), as well as for certain small-sized animal groups which have been traditionally neglected despite being relatively abundant in subterranean habitats, such as diplurans (Sendra, Antić, et al, 2020;Sendra, Palero, et al, 2020), proturans (Galli et al, 2021), palpigrades (Mammola et al, 2021), nematodes (Du Preez et al, 2017), gastrotrichs (Kolicka et al, 2017), and other meiofaunal lineages (Martínez et al, 2019;Sánchez & Martínez, 2019). The lack of taxonomists for many groups surely hampers the conduction of more concise studies on cave communities in many regions; a situation that is further aggravated by the existence of often high cryptic diversity within most subterranean taxa (Delić et al, 2017;Eme et al, 2018;Esposito et al, 2015;Fišer et al, 2018;Gonzalez et al, 2017;Niemiller et al, 2012).…”