On most of the Lesser Antilles, there are one or two species of Anolis lizard per island. In fact, these lizards have been studied frequently as a great example of adaptive radiation. On St. Martin, there are two species (A. gingivinus and A. pogus). On Saba, there is just one (A. sabanus). The male Saban anole is quite striking, with a pattern of dark spots. The female is more plain, looking much like the A. pogus found on St. Martin, although apparently A. sabanus is more closely related to A. gingivinus.

Just looking at them for the day, it seemed to me that there was quite a difference in size between the males and females, although I couldn’t be sure if I was comparing adults of each. If so, however, this would make some sense. On islands with two species of anole, usually one species is larger than another. On islands with just one species, the sexes are more likely to exhibit more sexual dimorphism in terms of size. This allows more lizards to share the same resources as they can target prey of slightly different sizes.

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.

In the moist forests of Saba, snails are very common and probably more noticeable than any other invertebrates. With only a couple exceptions however, the snails I encountered were all the same or very similar species of helicinid snail. This family of snails is actually quite interesting for a few reasons. One is that they are primarily found in a few locations that are quite far from each other: the Caribbean, Pacific islands and parts of Asia and Australia. They also moved to land independently of other snails, and their closest relatives are snails that live in either marine or fresh water environments.

In June, I visited Saba for just one day of hiking with the SXM Trails hiking association. It’s a small and beautiful volcanic island just twelve minutes away by plane and about two hours by ferry. Much newer than St. Martin, it is part of an arc of younger islands (or St. Martin is part of an arc of older islands) that sit beside each other in the northern part of the Lesser Antilles. It is known as The Unspoiled Queen, which is pretty accurate. With steep slopes and a lack of natural harbors, it is sparsely populated and very beautiful.

This first set of photos shows some views of Saba from the ferry, the towns of The Bottom and Windwardside and a few other hilltops and landscapes.

Saba is also an island where, to me, the plant life is probably more outstanding than the animal life. The top of Mount Scenery catches a cloud almost every day, providing plenty of water, and the height of the island naturally creates a variety of habitats, from tropical scrubland at the lower elevations to rainforest and elfin cloud forest near the top. I really didn’t photograph very many plants, the tree ferns are particularly wonderful, but here are a few. Some of the flowers were in town, so I’m not sure which are likely to be native.

I have many things to post, including photos from the SXM Trails trip to Saba and two weeks of photos from our Les Fruits de Mer expedition to Costa Rica. First, though, a few shots of a baby iguana. They’re so cute at this age.