Before a few nights ago, I had only seen a walking stick (or stick insect, or phasme, or phasmid) on the island on one occasion. Apparently this was not so much because they are rare or even so difficult to spot, but I just wasn’t looking properly. By scanning the trees overhead on the roadside with a flashlight, I was able to find six or seven in perhaps an hour. My sources think it is a species that was recently discovered in Puerto Rico in the genus Clonistria. The green ones in the images below are females, and they are immature. The brown ones are the males.

Phasmids are interesting because many islands harbor endemic species, and also because they look really cool. I found these on a variety of different trees and shrubs.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 10th, 2011 at 9:48 am and is filed under Explorations, Les Fruits sur la Terre. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.