Recent discoveries of a trio of previously unknown cave-dwelling species -- a minuscule, shrimplike crustacean near Akron and two kinds of spiders in southern Ohio -- could prove to the beginning of a statewide subterranean bio-blitz.

"It's really exciting, because it just hasn't happened that often in Ohio," said Erin Hazelton, an ecologist with the state's Department of Natural Areas and Preserves, who along with Wittenberg University biology professor Horton H. Hobbs III, led a two-year biosurvey of more than 230 known caverns in the state. "And there's no reason to think that there won't be more."

"And the deeper you go, the more life you're likely to find that you haven't seen before," Hazelton said.

Mike Johnson, chief of natural resource management for the Metro Parks, Serving Summit County, didn't have to go very deep Friday morning to find some of the newly identified swimmers.

He bottled one after poking around for a few minutes in a shallow pool just inside a cave entrance -- in the "transition zone" between the surface and underground -- in Liberty Park in Twinsburg.

The 1,700-acre park, owned and managed jointly by the city and park system, has a number of striking rock formations with cold water springs and caves -- home to tens of thousands of bats, spiders and the still-unnamed crustacean.

"Here's a few swimming around here, little white critters that look a bit like 'Sea Monkeys,' " Johnson said. He was referring to the brine shrimp species sold on television and in comic books, beginning in the 1960s -- many to children who were disappointed when the creatures failed to look like the figures on the package.

Similarly, the crustacean in Summit County doesn't exactly impress. But a closeup view reveals a rather scary-looking, opaque creature with multiple limbs and what appear to be antennae.

"This is a new species with characteristics you expect with cave-adapted species," he said. "There's not as much food or resources inside caves, so they end up smaller."

Officials at a lab in Virginia have officially tagged the shrimplike amphipod as a "presumed new species" among the more than 8,000 different invertebrate crustaceans.

The Hazelton and Hobbs cave team netted two new spider species the first year in Adams and Brown counties, near the Ohio River, an area with more and generally larger caves, Hazelton said.

The spiders are both amber to white in color and not even a quarter-inch long, with legs much longer than their bodies.

Oh, and they don't have eyes.

"That, along with general lack of pigmentation, means they have evolved to live in the cave environment," Hazelton said. She said while also not yet named, the spider species have been assigned to the genus of Islandiana (dwarf and sheetweb weavers).

Then, last summer, the researchers came across the tiny crustacean in several Summit County caves, including five different caves in Liberty Park.

Hazelton said the find may appear small in size, but discovering what lies beneath Ohio is important for several reasons.

"First of all, it's a unique and fairly stable environment that we just don't know as much about, so a scientist always wants to know more," she said. "Secondly, it gives us a chance to actually go into the underground aquifers that provide so much of the water to Ohio residents.

"Water quality is becoming increasingly important everywhere and studying the life in caves will help give us a picture of the water, too."

After all, Hazelton said, the crustacean is hardly new -- just newly discovered. She said Virginia lab officials suspect it developed between 5,000 and 120,000 years ago during the late Pleistocene period.

Hazelton said the findings have also given cave-crawling scientists and hobbyists something to finally brag about Ohio, a state where its caves are generally considered lesser brethren to the long, deep and fascinating holes in nearby Kentucky, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

"Really, the cave environment in Ohio has been ignored -- at least scientifically -- for many years and is just now coming into its own," Hazelton said. And that could soon mean more new species under our feet.

Maybe especially in Northeast Ohio, Hazelton said.

"We really just got started up here, so we still have a large area left to cover," she said. "We found many new caves in the western half of the state and expect similar results in the eastern half.

"And we already have some species that we haven't fully identified yet, so I would think we'll have some more new finds in Ohio."