An unavoidably short history of inland aquatic animal diversity research in the US Virgin Islands

Abstract

The first freshwater species from the US Virgin Islands (USVI) was described 190 years ago, but research on inland aquatic animals, particularly invertebrates, remains limited. Due to a complex history of European colonization in the Caribbean, natural history writings about inland aquatic diversity for the USVI began almost 250 years later than those from elsewhere. Those early writings were produced primarily by clergy and largely recorded indigenous knowledge from other islands. Proposed in the first natural history by West in 1793, and reinforced later by Ledru in 1810, an assumption emerged that Puerto Rico and USVI faunas were almost identical. This partially explains the paucity of work in almost all aquatic faunal groups but birds. We review the history of inland aquatic faunal observations and studies in the USVI, from pre-Columbian traditions to recent faunal assessments. We discuss the pivotal Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands and the importance of local and foreign naturalists and taxonomists for our understanding of aquatic biota. Since 1900, 155 articles included observations on USVI inland aquatic animals, without clear trends toward increased or decreased publication output since the 1960s. Taxonomic bias toward studies on insects and birds, and geographic bias toward vertebrate work from St. Croix, are evident. Descriptive articles overwhelmingly outnumber manipulative ones. Despite overlap between USVI and Puerto Rican inland aquatic vertebrate faunas, recent surveys from St. Thomas have documented many new records and undescribed aquatic invertebrates. The historical assumption that the two faunas are equivalent appears to depend on taxonomic context. This hypothesis requires further evaluation.