David C. Culver received his BA from Grinnell College and his PhD from Yale University. He is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at American University. He has studied the ecology, evolution, biogeography, and biodiversity of the subterranean fauna for five decades and has published more than 120 papers in refereed journals, and authored or co-authored four books, two with Tanja Pipan. His studies of the subterranean fauna have taken him to more than 20 countries. He was co-editor with William B. White of the first two editions of the Encyclopedia of Caves.

Tanja Pipan received her PhD in biology from the University of Ljubljana. She is currently Research Advisor at the Karst Research Institute, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) and Professor of Biology at the University of Nova Gorica. She has broad research interests in subterranean biology, especially biodiversity, biogeography, ecology of shallow subterranean habitats, and ecosystem function. She has extensive experience with a variety of Slovenian subterranean habitats and has done the most extensive ecological study to date of the very rich fauna found in the epikarst. Since 2011 she is an associate editor of the Journal of Speleology for the field of biospeleology. She has travelled extensively in her study of the epikarst and other subsurface habitats.