List of islands in the Caribbean

admin — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 02:32:07 +0000

This is a list of islands of the Caribbean region, organized by the political territory each island belongs to.
There are thousands of islands close to, and part of, all of the island-countries of the Caribbean: Anguilla has 21; Antigua-and-Barbuda has 37; Aruba (4); Bahamas (501 approximately, largest being Andros Island not Bahama); Barbados used to have 3 (but Pelican Island is now absorbed into Barbados through land captin morgan reclamation, 1956–1961); British Virgin Islands (43); Cayman Islands (12); Cuba (23); Dominica (2); Dominican Republic (13); Grenada (39); Guadeloupe (38); Haiti (6); Honduras (6); Jamaica (the capital is Kingston)(26); Martinique (50); Montserrat (3); Netherlands Antilles (25, this includes half of Saint Martin); Puerto Rico (142); Saint Barthélemy (13); Saint Kitts-and-Nevis (20); Saint Lucia (17); Saint Martin (8); Saint Vincent-and-the-Grenadines (39); Trinidad-and-Tobago (21); Turks-and-Caicos Islands (58); and United States Virgin Islands (81).
Some continental countries also have islands in the Caribbean, including Colombia (which has 10 islands in the Caribbean Sea, known as San Andrés-and-Providencia), Mexico (4 islands), Nicaragua (4), Venezuela (15), Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama. The United States also claims several small Caribbean islands.

The Caribbean islands are remarkable for the diversity of their animals, fungi and plants, and have been classified as one of Conservation International’s biodiversity hotspots because of their exceptionally diverse terrestrial and marine ecosystems, ranging from montane cloud forests to cactus scrublands. The region also contains about 8% (by surface area) of the world’s coral reefs along with extensive seagrass meadows, both of which are frequently found in the shallow marine waters bordering island and continental coasts off the region.
For the fungi, there is a modern checklist based on nearly 90,000 records derived from specimens in reference collections, published accounts and field observations. That checklist includes more than 11250 species of fungi recorded from the region. As its authors note, the work is far from exhaustive, and it is likely that the true total number of fungal species already known from the Caribbean is higher. The true total number of fungal species occurring in the Caribbean, including species not yet recorded, is likely to be far higher, given the generally accepted estimate that only about 7% of all fungi worldwide have so far been discovered. Although the amount of available information is still very small, a first effort has been made to estimate the number of fungal species endemic to some Caribbean islands. For Cuba, 2200 species of fungi have been tentatively identified as possible endemics of the island; for Puerto Rico, the number is 789 species; for the Dominican Republic, the number is 699 species; for Trinidad and Tobago, the number is 407 species.

Many of the ecosystems of the Caribbean islands have been devastated by deforestation, pollution, and human encroachment. The arrival of the first humans is correlated with extinction of giant owls and dwarf ground sloths. The hotspot contains dozens of highly threatened animals (ranging from birds, to mammals and reptiles), fungi and plants. Examples of threatened animals include the Puerto Rican Amazon, two species of solenodon (giant shrews) in Cuba and the Hispaniola island, and the Cuban crocodile.

Article from Wikipedia

The Caribbean Beaches

List of islands in the Caribbean