For a long time, scientists have thought that the Eastern Caribbean iguana had just two species. These are the critically endangered Lesser Antillean iguana and the highly variable common green iguana. But recent investigative work has revealed that there are several "new" species of the iguana, Phys.org reports.
But calling them "new" is something a misnomer since these two-meter lizards have been lounging plain sight for as long as anyone could remember. Unscrupulous wildlife traders have long regarded them as distinctive island varieties.
For example, the Santa Lucia iguana sports a broad black bands, while another specie named Grenadines pink rhino iguana often turns pinkish white when it gets old.
Threatened with Extinction
Fauna & Flora International (FFI), Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, and the forestry departments of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) and Saint Lucia joined forces with French taxonomists to investigate this further as they are not convinced that the resident lizards were merely aberrant forms of the green iguana.
Thanks to DNA sampling that spawned a scientific paper in which FF has contributed, both iguana species were formally recognized as endemic, threatened by extinction with its numbers down to less than a hundred. Without CITES permits from their respective country of origin, it is illegal to trade either of the two iguanas internationally.
The team is working on conserving these two lizards and also the Central American horned iguana, which are known to be invasive alien species on many islands in the region, as they breed rapidly hybridizing with the native lizards.
FFI and SV Forestry Department collected data and photographed the iguanas across St Vincent and the Grenadines to further analyze them. The results showed conclusively that the two iguanas are indeed new species.
This new species is named the Southern Antilles iguana, which has a cluster of horns on the nose, a high crest, and dark-brown eyes. FFI is already involved in conserving this newly recognized species, based on their ongoing efforts to safeguard two of its subspecies, the Saint Lucia iguana and Grenadines pink rhino iguana.
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They All Look Almost the Same!
It is more complicated in identifying the new species because they are virtually indistinguishable from those of the native pure-bred Southern Antilles iguanas. All of the juvenile iguanas in the Eastern Caribbean are bright green, making it harder for conservationists and law enforcers to tell which species is which.
According to Pius Haynes, Head of Wildlife at the Saint Lucia Forestry Department and a co-author of one of the papers, Saint Lucia iguana is used to be called "Iyanola," which means the Land of the Iguanas. He also said that iguanas play an important role in forest regeneration through dispersing seeds.
The Director of the SVG Forestry Department, Fitzgerald Providence, emphasized the need to "work with conservation organizations such as FFI and the island communities and establishing legislation and policies to protect their islands' biological diversity.
Dr. Jenny Daltry, FFI Senior Conservation Biologist, and a fellow co-author said that "Caribbean iguanas are in grave danger because of invasive alien species habitat loss and over-hunting for bushmeat and the pet trade."
Meanwhile, Redonda has also been confirmed as an entirely separate species, known as the melanistic or Saban black iguana.
