ECO-NEWS

The ‘exclusive’ flora and fauna of Cayman

Tuesday,  June 28, 2005

The current flora and fauna have been evolving here for approximately the last two million years since the Cayman Islands were last completely under the sea. There is no botanical evidence that the Cayman Islands ever had a dry-land connection to any other land mass since they themselves emerged from the sea. 

Or so wrote Dr. George Proctor in the 1984 edition of his magnificent handbook, ‘Flora of the Cayman Islands’, currently being updated. 

Within this time-scale of two million years, the research team of scientists inferred from their evidence that emergent mountain peaks forming the three Islands have supported unique ecosystems within the Rainforest and Reef Biomes of the Caribbean region. 

These major Rainforest and Reef Biomes are dependent on relatively high light intensity, high annual rainfall (40-45 cm), and high temperatures between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius all year-round. 

The Cayman Islands, however, experience significant variations from these annual figures, due to the limestone nature of the Islands, their topography (overall shape of the land with low altitude), and their position in the Caribbean, located at degrees 19N, 81W. 

The Islands experience a tendency towards drought for some periods of the year, resulting in plant adaptations not typical of rainforests. For example, cacti are commonly found growing wild on the Sister Islands, and in the dryer Eastern areas on Grand Cayman. Succulent plants like Hohenburgia and other dry-adapted plants like the palms, manchineel, mastic, mahogany and logwood, animal species like amphibians, birds, lizards, and certain insects and snails also manage to successfully survive drought interspersed with high rainfall and flood.

The first ecosystems of scientific interest include the extensive Coastal (littoral) fringing coral reef and sandy beaches and Ironshore. Brackish lagoons, ponds and Mangrove Wetland make up the second ecosystem and drier Forest woodland or bushland form the third ecosystem, each with their characteristic flora and fauna. 

“The Cayman Islands are…ideal for the study of the fragile ecosystems of small tropical islands” said Brunt and Davies in 1994. The 1938 Oxford Expedition was one of the first scientific expeditions to thoroughly document Cayman wildlife. 

Primary interests during the eighteen-week stay sixty-seven years ago were botanical (plants), herpetological (amphibians, reptiles), ichthiological (bony fish), molluscan (shellfish), and entomological (insects) but nearly every group of plants and animals received some attention. Endemic species are unique to the Cayman Islands, being found nowhere else in the world.

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