What's the relative humidity in tropical caves?

Relative humidity (RH) was measured at hourly intervals for approximately one year in two caves at seven stations near Playa del Carmen in Quintana Roo, Mexico. Sistema Muévelo Rico is a 1.1 km long cave with 12 entrances and almost no dark zone. Río Secreto (Tuch) is a large river cave with more th...

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Autores principales:	Luis Mejía-Ortíz, Mary C Christman, Tanja Pipan, David C Culver
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/fd1e8d9dda7d46a3aaa2d7a75c066334
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:fd1e8d9dda7d46a3aaa2d7a75c0663342021-12-02T20:08:07ZWhat's the relative humidity in tropical caves?1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0250396https://doaj.org/article/fd1e8d9dda7d46a3aaa2d7a75c0663342021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250396https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203Relative humidity (RH) was measured at hourly intervals for approximately one year in two caves at seven stations near Playa del Carmen in Quintana Roo, Mexico. Sistema Muévelo Rico is a 1.1 km long cave with 12 entrances and almost no dark zone. Río Secreto (Tuch) is a large river cave with more than 40 km of passages, and an extensive dark zone. Given the need for cave specialists to adapt to saturated humidity, presumably by cuticular thinning, the major stress of RH would be its deviation from saturation. RH in Río Secreto (Tuch) was invariant at three sites and displayed short deviations from 100% RH at the other four sites. These deviations were concentrated at the end of the nortes and beginning of the rainy season. Three of the sites in Sistema Muévelo Rico showed a similar pattern although the timing of the deviations from 100% RH was somewhat displaced. Four sites in Sistema Muévelo Rico were more variable, and were analyzed using a measure of amount of time of deviation from 100% RH for each 24 hour period. Strong seasonality was evident but, remarkably, periods of constant high humidity were not the same at all sites. In most Sistema Muévelo Rico sites, there was a detectable 24 hour cycle in RH, although it was quite weak in about half of them. For Río Secreto (Tuch) only one site showed any sign of a 24 hour cycle. The troglomorphic fauna was more or less uniformly spread throughout the caves and did not concentrate in any one area or set of RH conditions. Compared to temperature, RH is much more constant, perhaps even more constant than the amount of light. However, changes in RH as a result of global warming may have a major negative effect on the subterranean fauna.Luis Mejía-OrtízMary C ChristmanTanja PipanDavid C CulverPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 9, p e0250396 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Luis Mejía-Ortíz Mary C Christman Tanja Pipan David C Culver What's the relative humidity in tropical caves?
description	Relative humidity (RH) was measured at hourly intervals for approximately one year in two caves at seven stations near Playa del Carmen in Quintana Roo, Mexico. Sistema Muévelo Rico is a 1.1 km long cave with 12 entrances and almost no dark zone. Río Secreto (Tuch) is a large river cave with more than 40 km of passages, and an extensive dark zone. Given the need for cave specialists to adapt to saturated humidity, presumably by cuticular thinning, the major stress of RH would be its deviation from saturation. RH in Río Secreto (Tuch) was invariant at three sites and displayed short deviations from 100% RH at the other four sites. These deviations were concentrated at the end of the nortes and beginning of the rainy season. Three of the sites in Sistema Muévelo Rico showed a similar pattern although the timing of the deviations from 100% RH was somewhat displaced. Four sites in Sistema Muévelo Rico were more variable, and were analyzed using a measure of amount of time of deviation from 100% RH for each 24 hour period. Strong seasonality was evident but, remarkably, periods of constant high humidity were not the same at all sites. In most Sistema Muévelo Rico sites, there was a detectable 24 hour cycle in RH, although it was quite weak in about half of them. For Río Secreto (Tuch) only one site showed any sign of a 24 hour cycle. The troglomorphic fauna was more or less uniformly spread throughout the caves and did not concentrate in any one area or set of RH conditions. Compared to temperature, RH is much more constant, perhaps even more constant than the amount of light. However, changes in RH as a result of global warming may have a major negative effect on the subterranean fauna.
format	article
author	Luis Mejía-Ortíz Mary C Christman Tanja Pipan David C Culver
author_facet	Luis Mejía-Ortíz Mary C Christman Tanja Pipan David C Culver
author_sort	Luis Mejía-Ortíz
title	What's the relative humidity in tropical caves?
title_short	What's the relative humidity in tropical caves?
title_full	What's the relative humidity in tropical caves?
title_fullStr	What's the relative humidity in tropical caves?
title_full_unstemmed	What's the relative humidity in tropical caves?
title_sort	what's the relative humidity in tropical caves?
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/fd1e8d9dda7d46a3aaa2d7a75c066334
work_keys_str_mv	AT luismejiaortiz whatstherelativehumidityintropicalcaves AT marycchristman whatstherelativehumidityintropicalcaves AT tanjapipan whatstherelativehumidityintropicalcaves AT davidcculver whatstherelativehumidityintropicalcaves
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What's the relative humidity in tropical caves?

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