The New Species
A new species of marmot was discovered on St. Kitt Island, in the Caribbean. The discovery was made during a research project sponsored by the Department of Nature and Island Resources of the West Indies.

Photo: Courtesy D.T Blumstein Prior to this project, any marmot that inhabited either St. Kitt Island or the adjacent island, Nevis, were thought to be the Lava Marmot, Marmota cariba. The new species, which only inhibits St. Kitt Island has been named Kitt Marmot, Marmota judiona.

Background
In June of 1998, John Newman and a small team from the world famous Mammalian Research Center in Salt Lake City, Utah were contracted by the Department of Nature and Island Resources of the West Indies to investigate the declining population of the marmots on St. Kitt Island. Using the "Mark and Capture" process, the team determined that the present population of St. Kitt Island was 317 individuals, while the Nevis population was 2310.

Initial Experiments
Assuming these two identical looking marmots where the same species, John's team conducted 40 attempts to breed the St. Kitt marmots with breeding stock from Nevis Island.

All attempts failed with no copulation taking place between the two. Suspecting that genetic variations were the cause of the failures, John and his team conducted in-depth research to find the differences between the two marmots.

Research Findings

Reproduction variations:
Two important discoveries were made relating to the failure of the reproduction attempts. First, was the time spent in the courtship display. The Lava marmot spent 21.3 seconds in the display, while the Kitt marmot spent only 12.6 seconds in the display. This Prezygotic Reproductive Isolation known as Behavioral isolation can be a very strong barrier to successful mating and explained why no copulation was taking place. The second discovery was that the gestation time of the two marmots varied greatly, 29.3 days for Kitt verses 42.7 days for the Lava marmot. This indicated that there was significant biological reproductive differences, Gametic isolation, between the two species. If copulation had occurred, chances of natural reproduction were limited.
Morphological variations
Although the two species look identical, close inspection found variations in weight, length, leg length and forelimb size. To explain these variations John and his team needed to look farther into the history of the two islands. They suspected that these species had at one time lived together, but were now geographically separated by "The Narrows" a shallow ocean water passage separating the two islands.