Dr. Kal Ivanov, curator of recent invertebrates at the Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville, spent part of the fall surveying caves and forest wildlife in Ba Be National Park in Vietnam's Bac Kan province, roughly 150 miles north of Hanoi.
The park covers 10,048 hectares of limestone karst, lakes and forest. Its best-known feature is Puong Cave, a passage about 300 meters long cut through Lung Nham Mountain by the Nang River, where visitors travel by boat through the cavern. Ba Be was named an ASEAN Heritage Park in 2004 and a Ramsar wetland of international importance in 2011.
Ivanov's research focuses on ants, terrestrial isopods and millipedes, groups that are highly diverse in Southeast Asian caves and forest floors but poorly documented in the region. The next phase of the work moves to Pa Khoang Lake near the border with Laos. Specimens collected on the trip will be identified and catalogued at the museum in Martinsville.
STARNEWS.PLUS
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Source note: Star News TV · Nov 10, 2026 1:35 AM.
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