A New Species is Discovered in Great Basin National Park
Several years ago, one overcast November day, two scientists, Gretchen Baker and Ben Roberts, set off to do a routine mapping survey of a cave in Nevada’s Great Basin National Park. Wearing helmets and waterproof yellow suits, they squeezed through tiny holes, shimmied up muddy slopes, belly-crawled through dusty passageways, and waded through bone-chilling water.
Baker had suffered nightmares about becoming trapped in a cave by rising water. (Water levels can rise as much as 15 feet in one day.) Sure enough, as they retraced their steps toward the entrance of the cave, the water level in one of the pools had risen—not enough to trap them but enough to catch their attention.
Roberts peered into it to find a big surprise: something wiggling. Dozens of tiny shrimp-like creatures hung in the water. They slid a few into a vial, exited the cave, and sent them off to a cave-biology expert to be identified. Not long after, Baker got a call from the expert pleading for more specimens. This was a species new to science.
More than ten new species have been discovered in Great Basin National Park since 2002, including the white pine amphipod, which Roberts and Baker discovered by accident. But a harrowing fact: The waters that sustain these rare cave ecosystems are at risk of dropping or declining in quality because of a massive water-diversion project proposed by Las Vegas’s water utility. What will happen to the species who live in this spectacular, arid, diverse national park? Read my story on the discovery of the amphipod and what the future holds for Great Basin in the winter issue of National Parks magazine.