Groundwaters sustain diverse surface ecosystems and are populated by metazoan species, mostly invertebrates, that provide fundamental ecological functions and are often of prominent conservation value due to narrow endemism and high phylogenetic rarity. Taking advantage of an open‐access, Europe‐wide, and expert‐curated dataset (EGCop) that includes thousands of occurrence records of obligate groundwater‐dwelling copepods, we...

Motivation Subterranean biodiversity is increasingly threatened by multiple intertwined anthropogenic impacts, including habitat loss, pollution, overexploitation of resources, biological invasions and climate change. Worryingly, subterranean biodiversity is still poorly represented in conservation agendas, also due to persisting gaps in our knowledge of the organisms thriving in the often‐secluded and difficult‐to‐access subt...

Groundwater is a vital ecosystem of the global water cycle, hosting unique biodiversity and providing essential services to societies. Despite being the largest unfrozen freshwater resource, in a period of depletion by extraction and pollution, groundwater environments have been repeatedly overlooked in global biodiversity conservation agendas. Disregarding the importance of groundwater as an ecosystem ignores its critical rol...