Half-Earth by Edward O. Wilson

Author:Edward O. Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2016-03-22T16:00:00+00:00

The West Indies

CUBA AND HISPANIOLA. The two largest islands of the Greater Antilles contain an exuberant fauna and flora that form the bulk of the biodiversity of all the West Indies. Their ultimate affinity is to Central America, from which the Antillean landmass broke away by continental drift tens of millions of years ago. Their long isolation has resulted in the origin of large numbers of species that today are found nowhere else. Some, like the strange insectivore mammal Solenodon, are relicts from the islands’ earliest history. Others are the products of adaptive radiation, wherein one or a very few colonizing species have found less competition and more open niches than on the mainland. This circumstance has allowed some to proliferate into swarms of species that today individually fill the niches. Among the conspicuous examples are the diverse, abundant forms of anole lizards, and strange ants that glitter in metallic hues variously of blue and green. One day, while exploring in the Escambray Mountains of central Cuba, I found both a metallescent green ant species that nests in rock crevices and another species whose bodies flash gold foraging on low bushes. Moreover, both Cuba and the nearby Dominican Republic are surrounded by relatively undisturbed shorelines, with intact coral reefs.

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