| Sumario: | THE FAUNA OF ANCHIALINE CAVES. – Anchialine habitats are flooded caves and smaller voids opened within coastal aquifers that are affected by seawater intrusions. Most anchialine animals are undeniably of marine origin and are commonly blind and unpigmented. Many represent long-term survivors of ancient lineages, and display extremely disjunct and localized distributions, probably as a result of vicariance driven by plate tectonics. Such disproportionate representation of phylogenetically ancient taxa compared to the rest of the marine realm may depend not only on the large-scale historical and spatial continuity of the extended network of flooded fissures, cracks and caves constituting the anchialine environment, but also on the high environmental buffering effect of the network. A few anchialine animals appear to be related to deep-sea forms, suggesting a deep-sea origin. However, most data suggest a shallow water origin for the majority of anchialine animals. Numerous new species, genera, families and even a new class of crustaceans have been described from anchialine caves. This makes anchialine habitats uniquely important, although the restricted distribution and isolation of such species also renders them extremely vulnerable to the touristic exploitation that is threatening coastal zones
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