Puerto rico fauna: Discover the Wild Side of Puerto Rico

Puerto Rican Coqui | National Wildlife Federation

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Puerto Rican Coqui

Eleutherodactylus coqui

Status: Not Listed

Classification: Amphibian

Description

The Puerto Rican coqui (pronounced ko-kee) is a small arboreal frog that’s brown, yellow, or green in color. Its scientific genus name—Eleutherodactylus—means “free toes” because, unlike many frogs, the coqui doesn’t have webbed feet. These amphibians have special disks, or toe pads, on their feet that allow them to climb up vertical structures and cling to trees and leaves. Puerto Rican coquis are one to two inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) long and weigh two to four ounces (57 to 113 grams). They are one of the largest frog species found in Puerto Rico.

Range

As their name suggests, Puerto Rican coquis are native to the forests of Puerto Rico, but they’ve also been introduced to other places. One such place is the U.S. Virgin Islands, where they exist relatively peacefully. They’ve also been introduced to Hawaii, where they are considered a pest species because they consume native insects, and their deafening choruses are often irritating to people who aren’t used to them. Small numbers of Puerto Rican coquis are found in Florida greenhouses, and at one point, were also found in greenhouses in Louisiana, where they were considered an exotic species. Puerto Rican coquis utilize a variety of habitats, including forests, gardens, greenhouses, and spaces under rocks and logs. Most coquis spend their nights in the forest canopy and retreat to shelter on the ground at dawn. Their predators include birds, snakes, and large arthropods such as spiders.

Diet

These frogs eat mostly arthropods, including spiders, crickets, and roaches. Smaller coquis often eat smaller prey, such as ants, while larger coquis have been observed eating small frogs and lizards. A coqui will often sit motionless on leaves until prey gets very close, then quickly strike to ambush its prey.

Life History

The term “coqui” refers to the sound of the call produced by males to attract females and repel other males during mating season. Breeding occurs throughout the year, but especially during the wet season (April to October). Unlike most frogs, the Puerto Rican coqui doesn’t have a tadpole stage. Instead, tiny frogs with short tails emerge from the eggs. Males stay with the eggs for several days after they hatch to protect them from predators and prevent desiccation, or drying up. The eggs become unviable if they dry out, so the father frog diligently provides them with water via contact with his moist skin. More than 90 percent of adults don’t live longer than a year, although some six-year-old wild coquis have been found.

Conservation

Lowland populations are stable, but coqui numbers may be declining in the Palo Colorado Forest of Puerto Rico due to a fungal disease called chytridiomycosis. Habitat loss is also a threat to these frogs.

Fun Fact

Choruses of male coquis, which are beloved throughout Puerto Rico, can be heard from dusk until dawn all over the island.

Sources

Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan Museum of Zoology

Hawaii Department of Agriculture

NatureServe Explorer

Nonindigenous Aquatic Species, United States Geological Survey

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species

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Last updated by

Southeast Regional Office
on July 21, 2022

Cats in Puerto Rico – Individual tourism – LJ

Cats in Puerto Rico met literally at every step, but at first I thought that these bronze monuments were so simple, single works of art.

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Then a lot of works began to come across. They were all ugly and somewhat of the same type, you see, they cast from the same model.

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When we entered the souvenir shop, the number of cats went off scale beyond infinity.

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Of course, other representatives of the island’s fauna were also sold, for example, turtles, but they were negligible compared to these beauties.

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It is clear that there was a whole cult of cats on the island, but why and how this happened, I still had to find out. The shop assistants had no idea about it and didn’t even think about it. A couple of taxi drivers interviewed also shrugged their shoulders with laughter. And I decided to start my own investigation.

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Here’s what I found out.

Like any island in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico was once rich in flora and fauna. When people came here, and it happened about 4000 years ago, the fauna practically disappeared, and of all the mammals that previously inhabited the island, only bats remained. Marine mammals – do not count, I’m talking about terrestrial. All other animals – domestic cats, goats, sheep, Javanese mongooses and monkeys were introduced by people. And no one brought in rats, they were brought in by themselves. And it would be nice if they settled in the settlements, they penetrated the plantations and began to eat sugar cane, and this is already a real threat to the economy of the island.

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People didn’t think of calling cats for help right away and brought Javanese mongoose first. Mongooses began to eat not only rats, but also barely fledged chicks of the Puerto Rican Amazon, this is such a beautiful green parrot.
By the way, he’s hardly in the photo.

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People somehow caught mongooses, saved the Amazon population and bred cats.

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Cats and rats coped, but bred in unthinkable numbers. Despite the terrible gratitude from the grateful islanders, who even erected a monument to cats, they did not want to endure feral pussies. This is one of those cats who are more fortunate in life than others, she has a home.

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And this one.

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By the way, I approached these cats so carefully, fearing that they were shy and would immediately run away from us. What is there! They just ignored us!

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I saw all these beauties on the same street and could not even imagine what awaited us further.

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There were not enough owners for all the cats, and a real apocalypse began. Packs of hungry animals and crowds of tourists with packages of cat food in their hands flooded the capital. When there were more than four hundred of them, cats in San Juan alone, they became a real problem for the residents, and the latter demanded to lime the animals. You would think that people did not know that cats can breed and multiply!

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Fortunately, a few women were unwilling to accept this injustice and asked the city’s community and government to give them six months to deal with the problem, if they could think of something. Thus, the Save A Gato group was born on Facebook, and the process began.

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In just six months, more than 95% of the cats were vaccinated, neutered, cured, and had a chip implanted in their ears, but the rescue team did not stop there.

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They organized small shelters where cats were treated, looked after accidentally born kittens, looked for owners for them, mainly from among American tourists, and those animals that did not find a new home, instead of a lifelong the cages were settled outside the city, and even in such a historical, UNESCO-protected place as Fort Del Morro.

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The new habitat is really not bad: the kitties enjoy the views of the ocean, the sound of the waves and the gentle sun.

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And, of course, there are feeders full of food at every turn.

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Bricks on the lids – not so much from other people who want to eat, they can eat normally, but from the wind.

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Each box contains water and food, the containers with which are constantly replenished.

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And the cats don’t look hungry at all.

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Yes, not everyone looks healthy, but we don’t know how this cat looked, for example, a couple of months ago, maybe catastrophically?

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The wall on the left is Fort Del Morro, but cats don’t go there, there’s no food there.

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If you want, sit on a stone

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Do you see a cat here?

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I didn’t count cats, and without this it’s clear that there are a lot of them!

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This one purred very loudly.

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This one, for sure, was the same, only she was lying farther away, and she was not heard.

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She went about her business as soon as she was convinced that we were not going to her.

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Just some kind of cat’s paradise!

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This is not my last entry about the Caribbean, stay in touch!

Fauna of Puerto Rico

Fauna of Puerto Rico is similar to that of other island archipelagos, with high endemism and low, uneven taxonomic diversity. ^[1] Bats are the only extant native land mammals in Puerto Rico. All other land mammals in the area have been introduced by humans and include species such as cats, goats, sheep, small Indian mongooses, and runaway monkeys. Marine mammals include dolphins, manatees, and whales. Of the 349 bird species, about 120 breed in the archipelago, 47.5% are accidental or rare.

Puerto Rico’s most recognizable and well-known animal is probably the common coqui, a small endemic frog and one of the 86 species that make up Puerto Rico’s herpetofauna. Some native freshwater fish are found in Puerto Rico, but some human-introduced species have established themselves in reservoirs and rivers. A pattern of low richness and high diversity is also evident among the invertebrates, which make up the majority of the archipelago’s fauna.

The arrival of the first humans about 4,000 years ago and, to a greater extent, Europeans over 500 years ago, had a significant impact on the fauna of Puerto Rico. ^[2] Hunting, habitat destruction and the introduction of alien species in Puerto Rico have resulted in extinctions and extirpations (local extinctions). Conservation efforts, most notably the Puerto Rican parrot, began in the second half of the 20th century. According to the IUCN, as of 2002, there were 21 endangered species in Puerto Rico: two mammals, eight breeding birds, eight reptiles, and three amphibians.. ^[3]

The Caribbean Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate on which Puerto Rico and the Antilles (except Cuba) lie, formed in the Late Mesozoic. ^[4] According to Rosen, when South America separated from Africa, a volcanic archipelago known as the “Proto-Antilles” was formed. It later split into the modern Greater and Lesser Antilles due to a new fault line in the “Proto-Antilles”. ^[5] The Puerto Rico archipelago is geologically young, having formed about 135 million years ago (million years) ago. The prevailing hypothesis, proposed by Howard Meyerhoff, states that the Puerto Rico Bank, consisting of Puerto Rico, its outlying islands, and the Virgin Islands, excluding Santa Cruz Island, was formed by volcanism during the Cretaceous. ^[6] Late Jurassic/Early Cretaceous rock samples from the Sierra Bermeja in southwestern Puerto Rico support this theory. ^[7]

Debate continues about when and how the ancestors of the vertebrate fauna colonized the Antilles, in particular whether the Proto-Antilles were oceanic islands or they once formed a land connection between South and North America. The first and predominant model favors the settlement of continental, primarily South American, fauna above the water; the other suggests the vicarization of the Proto-Antillean fauna. Hedges et al. conclude that dispersal was “the primary origin mechanism for the West Indian biota”. Terrestrial vertebrate genera such as Eleutherodactylus . are dispersed across islands with a “filter” effect before any vicariization event has taken place. However, other fauna such as endemic Antillean insectivores ( Nesophontes sp., Solenodon marcanoi and others) and freshwater fish appear to have colonized the West Indies earlier in other ways. ^[8] Woods provides evidence in support of this hypothesis by analyzing the arrival of Antillean capromid and echimiid ancestors, concluding that the ancient echimid must have arrived in the Greater Antilles from South America, either via the Lesser Antilles or by island rafting. either Puerto Rico or Hispaniola. ^[9]

The common coca ( Eleutherodactylus coqui ) is perhaps the most recognizable species of Puerto Rican fauna.

Geographic location of Puerto Rico

Artistic depiction of the extinct Puerto Rican shrew

Rhesus macaque, a mammal introduced to Puerto Rico.

West Indian manatee, an aquatic mammal of Puerto Rico.

Bananaquit, the most numerous bird in Puerto Rico ^[22]

Yellow-shouldered Thrush, one of the 16 endemic birds of Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rican crested toad, an endemic amphibian species of Puerto Rico.

The hawksbill turtle, an endangered species

The Puerto Rican boa constrictor, the largest snake in Puerto Rico.