How a snack bag changed a cave
Caves are very special and sensitive habitats. A bag of corn flips has serious repercussions in the Carlsbad Caverns.
If you want to visit the extensive stalactite caves of Carlsbad Caverns National Park in the US state of New Mexico, you should only take pure tap water with you - for good reason, as a burst bag of corn flips proves. An unknown visitor had lost these in the caves, which had far-reaching consequences for the ecosystem, as the park reported on its Facebook page.
The moist conditions in the cave had softened the snacks, making them the perfect breeding ground for bacteria and fungi, which in turn attracted higher cave life. The boom led to a sudden flood of nutrients in the otherwise impoverished ecosystem: cave crickets, mites, spiders and flies fed on them or each other and distributed the nutrients further into the environment with their faeces. This again benefited microbes, including various moulds, which spread, forming fruiting bodies and ultimately a smelly biofilm.
To break the cycle, park rangers cleaned the cave area after discovering the food remains. In doing so, they noticed that many of the microbes and moulds detected actually came from outside and were not a regular part of the cave ecosystem. Nevertheless, some real cave dwellers, including invertebrates, also benefited from the brief period of food favour. In the article, the park once again urged that only pure water should be brought in: "From a human perspective, a burst snack bag may seem trivial, but for cave life, it can change the world."
In another post, park officials emphasised once again that the cave is not a large rubbish bin. Every day, rangers have to remove rubbish from the visitor area: from handkerchiefs and rubber bands to spit-out chewing tobacco or worse bodily excretions.
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