I would love to know if there is more diversity of insect species on Saba or St. Martin. On one hand, St. Martin is larger and probably has more invasive species. On the other hand, Saba has a wider variety of terrestrial habitats, including rainforest and elfin cloud forest (although it does lack mangrove wetlands). One would guess that many of the species found on St. Martin are also present in the lower elevations of Saba, while the upper regions of Saba may be more likely to harbor species that aren’t found in St. Martin. Hopefully someday I will find out the answer.

For the time being, I have a relatively small sample size of Saban insects. For starters, I’ve only visited a couple times. I’ve also spend most of my time in the wet forest habitats. In these areas, insect density actually seems to be lower than it is in St. Martin, probably because walking a trail primarily means exploring the undergrowth, which is relatively sparse due to lack of light. Surveys of the canopy or the leaf litter would probably be the most fruitful.

For the spiders of Saba I have much the same story, a lot of questions and not too much experience to go on. There are definitely some familiar spiders, but there were a couple that I’ve never noticed on St. Martin. Perhaps we need a wildlife guide for the Unspoiled Queen.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 8th, 2011 at 6:08 pm 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.