Land snail populations in abandoned water cisterns in Israel: A model system of artificial niche colonization

Many untended water cisterns which had been in use until 68 years ago may be found throughout Israel. These cisterns constitute a unique ecological niche for a variety of organisms, providing a prime opportunity to explore the colonization of an artificial, little-studied ecological niche, over long periods of time. We actualized this approach by conducting a land snail survey in ten sites, and found colonization of cisterns by troglophilic species in six of them. We report for the first time the finding of live specimens of Calaxis hierosolymarum (Roth, 1855) in Israel, demonstrating the rare access to underground cavities provided by this study system.