Small ruminants are very important livestock species in the English-speaking Caribbean. Total populations for the Caribbean region are approximately 677,000 goats and 281,000 sheep. Although the primary purpose of sheep and goats is meat production for local consumption, the animals are also a source of emergency income. Production systems are generally characterised as small-scale and low-inpu...

PREMISE OF THE STUDY Microsatellite loci were developed to characterize genetic variation and population subdivision in Heliconia bihai and H. caribaea from the Caribbean Islands. METHODS AND RESULTS A total of 13 new microsatellite markers were developed and characterized in the two Caribbean heliconias. Di-, tri-, and tetranucleotide repeats were identified with one to 17 alleles per locus,...

The involvement of Caribbean youth in drug distribution (marijuana from the mid-1960s to 1981; cocaine hydrochloride powder and crack from 1981 to 1987, the time of writing) throughout the Circum-Caribbean area and in North America is described. Social, economic, and cultural outcomes of these engagements are highlighted, and the relationship between the underground economy of drugs and the cor...

—The African diaspora to the Americas was one of plants as well as people. European slavers provisioned their human cargoes with African and other Old World useful plants, which enabled their enslaved work force and free maroons to establish them in their gardens. Africans were additionally familiar with many Asian plants from earlier crop exchanges with the Indian subcontinent. Their efforts e...