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[TomiTapio]

Rivers flow through the caves, carrying organic material and algae and plankton. And vapors (eons of miasma in the past) carry more organic stuff to the dwarven farms.

Or... some microbes/algae have learned how to use the heat from the magma sea instead of sunlight, to combine basic molecules into higher-energy molecules.

[breadbocks]

It can be simply amazing how useful these things are. Need a project for school on how you could survive on/in Mars? Search the DF forums.

[darkrider2]

It can be simply amazing how useful these things are. Need a project for school on how you could survive on/in Mars? Search the DF forums.

Dear god. My teacher might question my sanity if I showed her my project detailing the most efficient methods for the eradication of cats as a species.

[Noble Digger]

I always assumed a portion of the surface water--even dew--absorbs mineral salts and nutrients as it leeches through the soil layer (and later, through very small cracks in the rock layers) to reach the caverns. This, after all, is how caverns form. The water cycle on the surface does not exclude or ignore the underground! There are also creatures that live at the exits of deep-sea thermal vents which thrive in high-temperature, high-salinity, low-light conditions. These probably cause a whoooooooooooooole lot of "food" to enter the food chain. It's this facet of ecosystems that makes them so fascinating to me. Remove one creature, and the whole system could catastrophically break down. :[

[NW_Kohaku]

There's a difference between "nutrients" and biomass when we are talking about forming caves, however.  Most caves in real life have life only near the entrance of the caves, where creatures like bats, who fly in and out of those caves to get energy from outside, will drop guano and the like, which has undigested parts of food in them that fungi or grubs or whatever can survive on.

Fungi and bacteria and insects and worms and other decomposers are very, very efficient with energy - and they can decompose other decomposers, so as to squeeze every last drop of chemical energy out of formerly living things... but it only goes so far, no matter how fuel-efficient, you eventually run out.

You need a constant source of new chemical energy, which means either surface plants, chemosynthetic life based on direct access to magma vents (preferably in water), or you need some kind of xenomorphic/magical energy source for life, like forgotten beasts or demons just plain generating matter and energy from nowhere, or from another dimension.

[breadbocks]

It can be simply amazing how useful these things are. Need a project for school on how you could survive on/in Mars? Search the DF forums.

Dear god. My teacher might question my sanity if I showed her my project detailing the most efficient methods for the eradication of cats as a species.

Would that be a project for school assigned by said teacher?

[darkrider2]

It can be simply amazing how useful these things are. Need a project for school on how you could survive on/in Mars? Search the DF forums.

Dear god. My teacher might question my sanity if I showed her my project detailing the most efficient methods for the eradication of cats as a species.

Would that be a project for school assigned by said teacher?

Dear Armok I hope so.

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, I once did a Science Fair project purely on a statistical analysis of Battletech, especially with customization strategies. 

I got an A.

[Vercingetorix]

Actually, I once did a Science Fair project purely on a statistical analysis of Battletech, especially with customization strategies. 

I got an A.

Wow, the best I ever had was growing plants in sand.  I got an A, but still...