I got a great suggestion about yesterday’s mystery insect, that it is a thrips. Thrips are small insects from the order Thysanoptera, and the ones I see the most on St. Martin live on ficus leaves. In fact, if you see a ficus with leaves that are folded shut, open the leaf and you will usually find something resembling the photo below. The black insects are the adult thrips, the light-colored ones are immature and I think the small ovals are empty eggs. Also, I just learned that the word thrips is both singular and plural, so there is no such thing as a thrip.
