Background Paper No. 2


 ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN THE VIRGIN ISLANDS

 Historical and Administrative Background



 This paper is intended to provide for a general intro-

 ductory background theme to the topic of "Research Needs in

 Ecology in the Virgin Islands", one session of the Research

 Needs Conference, a multi-disciplinary effort, sponsored by

 the College of the Virgin Islands through it's Caribbean Re-

 search Institute, and being held at the College, St. Thomas,

 Virgin Islands, 24 April 1973.


 In this discourse I am restricting my definition of the

word "ecology" to the traditional definition used by biolo-

gists; that is, a study of the relationships of plants and

animals to one another and to their environment. I do not in-

tend to provide background discussion upon those broader, and

more lately popular, definitions which in fact would preclude

a comprehension of the sum total of environmental influences,

thus breaching several of the other topics of this Conference.


 This paper is also not an attempt to examine in depth

what has already been accomplished in ecological research in

the Virgin Islands; such would merely be redundant, for this

technical information is already in command and use by those

participants at this Conference. For those readers who may

not have a background on such research, there is no quick and

easy reference; excellent starting points, however, are the


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