Category: Wild Statia

Get Your Photo Published in Statia Wildlife Book

The Red-billed Tropicbird is one of Statia’s most beautiful animals.

The upcoming book The Incomplete Guide to the Wildlife of Statia is being finalized this summer. The book will be the first wildlife guide for the island. The authors, Hannah Madden and Mark Yokoyama invite Statians to submit photos of wildlife for inclusion in the book.

“Right now, the book has about 500 photos,” explained co-author Mark Yokoyama. “It will be a beautiful way to learn about Statia’s unique wildlife. But we still have a little time to make it even better. If anyone has some great wildlife pictures from Statia, we’d love to see them.”

The Panther Anole is also known as the Green Tree Lizard and the St. Eustatius Anole.

The wildlife book will feature all kinds of animals from Statia, from bats and birds to bugs and snails. The co-authors have been researching and writing the book for the last several years and planning to go to print this summer for a release this winter. The book project has been financed by the generous support of Nustar and is being published by the St. Martin-based nonprofit Les Fruits de Mer.

Co-author Hannah Madden looks out over Statia.

“We are very excited to publish this book,” said co-author Hannah Madden. “Statia’s wildlife is rich and unique. It deserves to be showcased beautifully. We especially hope the book helps youth learn about and love their natural heritage.”

Photo submissions can be made to [email protected]. Photographers who have a photo selected for inclusion will receive a copy of the book. More information about the project, including a free ebook, can be found at http://statiawildlife.com.

Wild Statia: A Closer Look

A closer look at a photo of a Statian spider raises some questions. Then again, a closer look at any insect or spider in the Caribbean has the potential to do that. Read it in this weekend’s Wild Statia column in The Daily Herald.

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Wild Statia: A Resurrected Name

In some ways, taxonomy is the art of keeping things organized in a world where our knowledge about animals and how they are related to each other is always changing. In Statia, and the Caribbean in general, the story of our fauna is still being written, and the names of the characters are still subject to change:

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Wild Statia: Evolution in Motion

A Caribbean original slides towards extinction.
A Caribbean original slides towards extinction.

The recent discovery of a hybrid iguana on Statia is an ominous sign for the native and endangered Lesser Antillean Iguana. It is also a reminder that humans have likely changed the pace of evolution on the island in many ways.

Statia’s distinctive wildlife is the product of a variety of natural processes: the slow colonization of the island by new species arriving by natural means and the adaptation of those new arrivals to the island and the other species present. The arrival of humans has brought huge changes. They are clearly visible to anyone looking out over fields of invasive Coralita vines, but many impacts are much less visible.

In the case of Coralita, an invasive plant that has spread over much of the island, the likely losers are native plants that become more scarce due to competition. Animals that may have depended on those plants—like caterpillars which often only eat specific host plants—may also decline or disappear.

Hybridization is less common—it requires two closely-related species that can interbreed. In the case of the native Lesser Antillean Iguana and the invasive Green Iguana, it exacerbates the impact of competition. Green Iguanas tend to outcompete Lesser Antillean Iguanas, but the two populations could coexist if they didn’t interbreed. Over time, hybridization may wipe out all trace of the native species.

Native animals may also rapidly change in response to new arrivals. One study looked at soapberry bugs, a group of insects that use their straw-like proboscis to pierce the fruit of a specific family of vines. After the introduction of a new food source, the length of their proboscis changed, allowing them to take advantage of a new food source. The change was surprisingly speedy, too. It was noticeable within just 50 years.

A soapberry bug with a long proboscis.
A soapberry bug with a long proboscis.

The story of invasive species is full of disasters: the rats that endanger seabirds around the world, the mongoose that wiped out the Lesser Antillean Iguana on St. Martin, and many more. As damaging as they are, only a small percentage of introduced species pose serious problems. The rest? They work their way into the local ecology of Statia, perhaps pushing native species in new evolutionary directions, perhaps adapting themselves to the island. As we continue to push ecosystems in unprecedented new directions, hopefully we will also study these less obvious interactions and learn to lessen their negative effects.

Wild Statia: The Precision Hunter

The insect world is full of things that are strange, beautiful and terrifying. This week in Wild Statia we focus on a critter that is all three. Admirers the finely-tuned results of millions of years of evolution and designers of terrifying movie monsters please take note.

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Wild Statia: Fauna in Focus

In this week’s Wild Statia article, we take a close-up look at one of the challenges of creating a wildlife guide: wildlife photography! Of course, to be fair, the photography is also one of the most fun and rewarding parts of working on the book.

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Wild Statia: In the Field

I spent last week in the field working on the upcoming Statia wildlife book with Hannah Madden and it was a blast. We saw—and documented—many things, and I’m still going through my photos. In the meantime, the most recent Wild Statia article explains a bit about working in the field.

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Discover Stories of Statia’s Wildlife in Free Wild Statia Ebook

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Anyone with an interest in Statia and its wildlife is in for a real treat: a free ebook—Wild Statia—was just released by naturalists Hannah Madden and Mark Yokoyama. The 55-page book is illustrated with captivating photos taken by the authors.

The book’s fifteen chapters each take a closer look at a unique aspect of Statia’s wildlife, from majestic tropicbirds to extraordinary nocturnal insects, and all the lizards in between. Readers will also discover more about the habitats that support wildlife and the work being done to understand and protect natural heritage. The format of the book emphasizes the fascinating stories that are often left unexplored by scientific publications.

Madden and Yokoyama will be in the field this week doing research for their upcoming guide to the wildlife of Statia, which will be the first book of its type for the island. The authors aim to complete the wildlife guide in 2016. This project is managed by the non-profit association Les Fruits de Mer, with support from the St. Eustatius Tourism Development Foundation and funding from NuStar Terminals, N.V..

In addition to documenting the animals themselves, the authors are excited to learn about wildlife from the people of Statia. According to Yokoyama, “One thing that you will notice in Wild Statia is a passion for connecting natural history with human culture—the names given to animals, the stories told about them and the ways that we have impacted nature over time. If you have any information about wildlife on Statia, we’d love to hear it.” Stories, info and names for Statian wildlife can be shared by sending them to [email protected].

Many of the chapters are adapted from articles in Yokoyama’s ongoing Wild Statia series in the Weekender section of The Daily Herald. The ebook can be downloaded right here at lesfruitsdemer.com.

Wild Statia: No Wildlife…Few Birds

Offhand comments about Caribbean wildlife from centuries past—they may not be that useful from a scientific perspective, but they tell us so much about past attitudes towards wildlife. In this week’s Wild Statia column, we look at Statian wildlife from a 1792 perspective.

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Wild Statia – Winter Songs

As International Migratory Bird Day events take place across the Caribbean this month, we take a look at the migratory songbirds that spend their winters in Statia. Read about them in The Daily Herald‘s Weekender.

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Wild Statia Launches in Weekender

The new column Wild Statia launched in The Daily Herald’s Weekender section this morning. It will document the wildlife of Statia, the island itself, and the process of making a book about the island’s wildlife. Being on Statia is amazing, hopefully reading about it will be at least a bit interesting!

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