ABSTRACT
Before mankind emerged as a travel agent for a myriad of species, ranging from the Norway rat and Asian carp to Brazilian pepper and Australian pine, flora and fauna depended on natural means of dispersal for colonizing new regions. Biologically, South Florida is a “new land” because of its history of alternating submergence and emergence, and because of its major changes in climate, both of which have eradicated many species of plants and animals through the glacial cycles. The important factors that determined the region’s “new” flora and fauna were its geographic setting at the edge of the tropics, from which it is isolated by water, and its land connection by a long peninsula to temperate North America. The flora and fauna present when Columbus arrived in what he called the New World (the Western Hemisphere) had arrived in the region by their own modes of dispersal,† and had succeeded based on their tolerance of the climate, the habitats, competition, and numerous other factors.
