Finding a new world - Endoscopy of cryptic habitats

Although features such as old woodpecker holes, cracks and crevices are usually recognized as potentially important habitats for cryptofauna communities, these small cavities have been almost entirely neglected with the available cryptofauna studies mostly concentrating on easily accessible environments such as large caves and tunnels. Environmental impact studies often neglect cryptic species justifying technical difficulties associated with their location or arguing that they tend to exhibit low fidelity to individual crevices being the absence of data in many cases responsible for the destruction of animal roosts during the construction works of several projects. The bat species roosting in small cryptic habitats are an example of a group that has been neglected in Portugal, in spite of some of them are currently facing high risk of extinction. A large number of groups of vertebrates and invertebrates were registered which led us to conduct studies in a broader framework to demonstrate that endoscopy is a powerful, cost-efficient and non-destructive tool for in situ observation and documentation of structure and dynamics of several cryptic communities. The results of the present study suggest that this technique should be included on future Environmental Impact Assessment studies, due to its simplicity and ease of use, and would complement current methodologies to measure the effectiveness of mitigation measures and compensatory plans.