Table Mountain Caves

We spent an evening at the MCSA hut on Table Mountain.  Visited Wynberg Cave, Vivarium, Bats Cave and Inukchuk.

Wynberg Cave

In Wynberg Cave we found the following:

• A Ghost frog just below the knotted rope near the cave exit.
• Small orange harvestman, something like this one.
• 2 Centipedes in Pluto's Hall, one about 20mm long, the other about 60m long and much more robust. The larger centipede was in in a crack about 2m above the floor. It disappeared further into the crack when we tried to get it out for a closer look.
• Small black beetles in Pluto's Hall.
• Speleosiris harvestmen in Plutos Hall.
• 4 Rotten Rosettus aegyptiacus carcasses in Plutos Hall.
• Various Spiders
• Lots of cave crickets of various sizes.  

Vivarium

In Vivarium there were a few Speleogrifis in the stream and a Megaloptera larva. We did not see any planaria this time. There were also small spiders and fruit flies on the ferns. 

Bats Cave

In Bats Cave, we captured 3 young males.  No parasites were found and the bats were released.

Inukchuk

Small peripatus

This proved to be an interesting visit, although not as interesting as our previous bug visit. We found many small snails, probably Trachycystis tollini.  Euan found a very small peripatus and Alex Rebelo photographed this dipluran. We spent a long time looking for pseudo-scorpions, but did not find any,  Alex found a a very fine legged, white harvestman, but it was lost in the excitement when Euan found the peripatus.

Dipluran.  Photo by Alex Rebelo.