The Dermaptera of the Caribbean

The most complete survey of the Dermaptera of the Caribbean is that of REHN & HEBARD (1917), which mainly dealt with material collected on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History, but additional records from specimens in other American Institutions were included. This publication did not include all previous records and keys to the species were not given, apart from a short key to some names which were regarded as being forms of Carcinophora americana (Beauvois). A number of subsequent papers on the Dermaptera of these islands have been published, these papers either giving records from a single island or recording species from various islands, but no comprehensive survey of the known Dermaptera has been compiled. The islands of the Caribbean form an interesting area, and a comprehensive survey of the Dermaptera is desirable so that an adequate comparison of this fauna can be made with the fauna of the American mainland. The present author has had the opportunity recently to examine a large collection of Dermaptera collected on the islands of the Caribbean by Dr. P. WAGENAAR HUMMELINCK. This collection is particularly interesting since HUMMELINCK has collected on most of the smaller islands, and it is these islands which are the least known, most available records having been made on the larger islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico. Through the kindness of Pastor ALAYO D, a collection of Dermaptera from Cuba has also been examined, together with photographs of the specimens in the Gundlach collection which were listed by BOLIVAR (1888). These photographs have proved to be useful in checking on the species, and the correlations of the names used by BOLIVAR with modern nomenclature and the synonymy, is based on these photographs.