Aphis gossypii Glover, 1877 (Hemiptera, Aphididae) is one of the world's most polyphagous agricultural pests. Integrated pest management strategies for its control require application of knowledge of its biology and ecology, including host preference. This study was designed to examine colonization sequence, fecundity, and colony growth as a measure of host preference among three common economically important host. Colonization sequence was determined in a mixed field plot of Capsicum chinense Jacq. (Solanaceae), Cucumis sativus L. (Cucurbitaceae), and Gossypium hirsutum L. (Malvaceae) seedlings. Colony initiation and establishment always occurred on G. hirsutum before the other hosts. Aphids were observed as early as eight days after planting. Aphids collected from the field were acclimatized to the same host plant species in a glasshouse for three generations. Third instar nymphs were used to start colonies on new plants from which fecundity and colony size were documented daily. After twenty-four days the largest colony sizes were reached on cotton (x̄ 70). Colony sizes were found to increase more significantly every three days (p <0.05), especially in the exponential phase; this has implications for regimes implemented to monitor and manage infestations. Third instar aphids were transferred among the hosts then colony size was documented as a measure of suitability and preference. Differences in colony size after transfers were all significant (p <0.05), especially for transfers from pepper to cucumber. Colonies however, developed on all transfer hosts indicating that host transfer success is highly probable once these host plants exist within an intercropping system.

El pez león Pterois volitans fue introducido en el Océano Oeste Atlánico desde hace más de 30 años, pero fue registrado por vez primera en el Golfo de México en 2010. Dada su expansión poblacional en la región, el pez león se ha convertido en una invasión biológica que amenaza el ecosistema marino. El objetivo de este trabajo fue describir algunas características reproductivas básicas de este pez por vez primera para el sureste del golfo frente a la costa norte de la península de Yucatán, México. Las muestras fueron recolectadas a través de un programa de ciencia ciudadana, en el cual los pescadores buzos-langosteros arponearon pez león entre 2010 y 2018. La distribución de frecuencias de talla del pez león fue significativamente diferente entre sexos, con los machos más grandes que las hembras. La proporción en sexos fue signitificativa con predominancia de machos. Los análisis histológicos revelaron que la hembra y macho maduros más pequeños tuvieron 160 mm LT and 196 mm LT, respectivamente. Las hembras alcanzaron una madurez sexual (50%) a una talla menor comparada con los machos. Ambos sexos estuvieron en fase de desove capaz durante todos los meses de muestreo (junio a diciembre), con picos de índice gonadosomático en junio, septiembre y diciembre en las hembras. La estimación del intervalo de desove es cuatro días. En el sureste del golfo, el pez león madura a una talla mayor que el pez león del norte del golfo y el de otras regiones en el Océano Atlántico Oeste, con la excepción de Bermuda. Aunque el tamaño de muestra en nuestro estudio es limitado, la oportunidad para identificar la talla de madurez es útil para establecer una línea base para la historia de vida del pez león en el sureste del golfo.

The ant fauna in natural and rural areas of Jamaica has received substantial interest in the past. However, no recent works have focused primarily on the ants of urban and suburban areas. In this study, we assessed the species richness and origin of ants in urban and suburban areas of St. Andrew, Jamaica. Ant specimens were hand-collected within a 30 m radius area during a 15 minute search conducted at 27 sample sites during 39 sampling events. A total of 31 ant species were collected, representing a mixture of 18 native (58.1%) and 13 introduced (41.9%) species. Among the 18 species native to the Caribbean region, three (9.7%) are endemic to Jamaica, namely Camponotus hannani, Camponotus fugax, and Cephalotes jamaicensis. Sixteen tramp species (species with a worldwide distribution) represented 51.6% of the ant community, including Brachymyrmex patagonicus, Nylanderia steinheili, Paratrechina longicornis, Tapinoma melanocephalum, and Trichomyrmex destructor. Brachymyrmex patagonicus, Solenopsis geminata, and P. longicornis were most prevalent, being respectively found at 92.6%, 85.2%, and 81.5% of the sampled sites. Brachymyrmex obscurior, Camponotus fugax, Camponotus sexguttatus, Crematogaster steinheili, and Pheidole subarmata were among the least prevalent, each found at only one site. This publication presents the first published records of Solenopsis globularia and Monomorium pharaonis in Jamaica, with short descriptions of their habitats. The urban and suburban ant community of St. Andrew presents a relatively high species richness.

The informal group of Basidiomycetes commonly known as Gasteromycetes, are now included in the sub-classes Agaricomycetidae and Phallomycetidae. These fungi are characterized mainly by distinctive enclosed fruiting bodies with a gleba that stores spores until maturity. For Puerto Rico, there is no official inventory of Gasteromycetes. To fulfill this need, a study was conducted within five different areas at the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Refuge in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. Mature specimens were collected during twenty-eight fieldtrips between January, 2016 and July, 2017 from areas under three different conservation strategies. Throughout the visits there was a pattern of occurrence of various genera consistent with the season. Bovista, Cyathus, Rhizopogon, Tulostoma, and two unknown species were collected exclusively during the rainy season. Calvatia and Disciseda occurred only during the dry season. The presence of saprophytic and ectomycorrhizal Gasteromycetes is indicative of the success of the different conservation/restauration strategies implemented at the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Refuge in Cabo Rojo.

Brother Marie-Victorin was the founder of the Montreal Botanical Garden, and one of the most important figures in the botanical history of Canada. Between 1938 and 1944, he undertook seven major plant exploration expeditions to Cuba that resulted in the discovery of several new Cuban endemics. Archival research carried out in the Division de la Gestion de Documents et des Archives (University of Montreal) revealed that during his voyages to Cuba, he made three major side-trips in 1940, 1941, and 1942 to other regions of the Caribbean. Specifically to Barranquilla (Colombia), Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, and Yucatan (Mexico). We could not find any of his written accounts of his 1940 voyage to the Yucatan; however, we were able to find a collection of photographic slides. An unpublished 33-page travelogue of his 1941 trip to Colombia, Jamaica, and Trinidad was discovered, studied, and translated into English, with annotations. Furthermore, we examined and interpreted two of his published papers that described the 1942 visits to Haiti and Puerto Rico. During these three “out-of-Cuba” voyages, no plant material was collected; however, Brother Marie-Victorin's written accounts and the 502 photos that he took provide unique insights into Caribbean society of the 1940s, as well as on the naturalists and botanists working in the region, and the plants and habitats they encountered. Brother Marie-Victorin's records highlight racial discrimination against those of African descent in Jamaica and Trinidad. It appears that these trips did not lead to major botanical research initiatives. Furthermore, the few collections that he made for potential propagation in botanic gardens or botanical institutes are not currently being grown any longer. The trips had clear leisure aims and they were centered on learning about the society, the flora, and plant science research activities of the visited areas.

Information about the taxonomy and ecology of polychaetes from Caribbean Mesophotic Coral Ecosystems (MCEs) is limited. To fill this information void, substrata samples were collected using technical diving from several mesophotic localities (between 40–91 m depth) in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands between 2007 and 2012. A total of 76 genera, distributed among 34 families, were identified. All genera have previously been reported from the Caribbean and from other marine ecoregions. Syllidae was the best-represented family across all sampled localities with the largest number of genera (15) and the highest number of individuals (5,755, or 80.85% of the total records). Haplosyllis was the most abundant and most frequently sampled genus in the sampled sites. Bajo de Sico, a mesophotic coral ecosystem (MCE) off the west coast of Puerto Rico, was the location with the highest abundances (1,183 worms), while the MCE of the extended insular shelf off La Parguera Natural Reserve on the southwest coast of Puerto Rico had the highest number of genera (59), perhaps related to higher sampling effort and its greater spatial heterogeneity. In our qualitative samples, the abundances and number of Polychaeta genera tended to be higher in the shallower sites (<60 m) than in the deeper ones (>60 m).

The small Indian mongoose (Urva auropunctata) is a non-native invasive species across the Caribbean and a rabies reservoir on at least four islands in the region. Although previous studies reported mongoose density estimates in their non-native range, the variability in trapping designs, study seasonality, and analytical methods among studies precludes direct comparisons. This study is the first to report mongoose densities for the island of St. Kitts, West Indies. Our objective was to quantify mongoose densities across four habitats characteristic for the island. High capture and recapture rates in this study resulted in detailed estimates of spatial heterogeneity in mongoose densities, ranging from 0.53 (CI95: 0.46–0.61) mongooses/ha in suburban habitat to 5.85 (CI95: 4.42–7.76) mongooses/ha in nearby dry forest. Estimates were robust to the estimation method used (correlation among methods, r > 0.9). Female-biased sex ratios estimated from fall season versus mostly unbiased sex ratios estimated from summer season suggests seasonality in capture success resulting from differences in sex-specific activity patterns of mongooses. We found no effect of habitat characteristics, at the scale of trap placements, associated with mongoose capture success.

The Boquerón Wildlife Refuge is the largest mangrove forest on Puerto Rico's west coast. Many of the mangrove channels there are periodically invaded by mats of the floating fern Salvinia. Since invasive plant species impact the biodiversity of wetlands, a monthly assessment of the aquatic macroinvertebrate diversity was conducted from June to November of 2013, in three mangrove areas invaded by Salvinia as well as three areas without it. Three sampling methods were used: aquatic light traps, emergence traps, and D-net sweeps. A total of 21,305 invertebrates representing 24 orders and 72 families were collected and identified. Diptera (21 families) showed the greatest taxonomic richness, followed by Coleoptera (12 families). Shannon-Weiner, Simpson, and Jaccard indexes were calculated per sampling method to compare the diversity between habitat-types. Permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) indicated significant variations in abundances between habitat-types in light-traps and D-nets, while showing significant temporal variations in abundances in the emergence traps. Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) was used to represent the results of the PERMANOVA. Analysis of similarity (ANOSIM) and similarity percentage analysis (SIMPER) were employed to evaluate (dis-)similarities between habitat-types. Regardless of the type of trap, about half of the taxa were shared between the two habitat-types.

Larvae and small juveniles of Caribbean Polydactylus species (Teleostei: Polynemidae) are rarely seen. Here we describe a juvenile individual of Polydactylus oligodon, the Littlescale threadfin, collected on Montserrat, Lesser Antilles, West Indies.

The small Indian mongoose (Urva aurpunctata) is a non-indigenous wildlife reservoir for rabies virus on several Caribbean islands. Oral rabies vaccination (ORV) has been suggested to prevent the spread of rabies in mongooses, but there are limited data on ORV bait survival in maritime/tropical climates. We compared disappearance rates of an egg-flavored bait block vs. a control (canned tuna) and for bait blocks, we assessed if season, habitat, and day/night would influence the disappearance rate. On the island of St. Kitts, West Indies, we baited 45 stations (n=35 bait blocks, n=10 controls) at dawn and checked them twice daily for 4 consecutive days. This procedure was repeated after a two-day period, for each combination of season (dry and wet) and habitat type (mixed grassland, littoral and dry forest). We used the Kaplan-Meier method to estimate bait survival at 12 and 36 hours after baiting. Across all sites, control baits were removed faster than bait blocks, but by 36 hours, over 90% of all baits had disappeared. For bait blocks only, the disappearance rate was higher during the dry season and in the dry forest habitat compared to the other habitats. There was no difference between diurnal and nocturnal disappearance rates. While the exact species that consumed the baits remain uncertain, we found that mongooses readily remove bait blocks, along with non-native mammals (e.g., dogs and cats) and land crabs in littoral habitats. We suggest that the bait blocks used in this study may be suitable for use as an external bait matrix for ORV baits.