Hispaniolan insects inventoried
Dominican biologist Daniel Perez-Gelabert of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. has compiled “Zootax, Arthropods of Hispaniola, a checklist and bibliography”, the first comprehensive listing of insects of the DR and Haiti. The inventory is published as a monograph in an international science journal and covers all known terrestrial and aquatic species of crustaceans, arachnids, myriapods and insects from the island through the end of 2007. The list includes 8,237 valid species of arthropods (6,833 living and 1,404 fossils), the number of living species being over 12 times that of the vertebrates.
Of this grand total most are insects (5,676 extant species (83%) and 1,404 fossil species). A total of 2,521 species (36.9% of the total living) are considered unique or endemic to Hispaniola. Despite the important advances, this fauna is still not well known, actually being the least studied in the Greater Antilles. The Hispaniolan arthropods are estimated [...]
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