Mexico's Totonac are the first known cultivators of vanilla. Jess K. Zimmerman, John R. Thomlinson, and Xioming Zou are professors in the Institute for Tropical Ecosystem Studies at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico 00936. Department of Biology and Center for Applie d Tropical Ecology and Conservation, Univers ity of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras campus, PO Box 23360, San Juan, PR 00931, Puerto Rico 2 Puerto Rico’s natural beauty is one of its biggest draws. During Mrs. Hartman's Biology class, 9th graders were assigned an Ecology term to define creating a video using FlipGrid. When the Totonac were conquered by the Aztecs, they gifted vanilla to the Aztec kings in the same way gold and maize were gifted… After Hurricane Maria damaged its ecology, conservationists are trying to restore what’s left of the island’s flora. UConn professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Michael Willig is part of an international team that has spent the past 30 years studying elements of the ecosystem in hurricane-prone Puerto Rico, and how that ecosystem responds to weather-driven disturbances.

... Register to Nature Research Ecology & Evolution Community . Of course, hurricanes have struck Puerto Rico many times in the past, most recently Hurricane Hugo (1989) and Hurricane Georges (1998), but a storm of Maria’s severity had not made landfall on the island since 1928.

Treat the adventurer in you to Puerto Rico's finest natural wonders, ... being 50 miles from any other shore and located between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Vanilla doesn't come to mind when you think of Puerto Rico. It has its own ecology system with giant iguanas and bird life. Yet the history of vanilla is intricately tied to the history of the island. Puerto Rican artists and the contexts within which they created their art, you get to see quite a few beautiful pieces while also gaining an understanding of the place of art in Puerto Rican history and culture." 5 Eileen Helmer is a research ecologist in the International Institute of Tropical Forestry at the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, PO Box 2500, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico 00928. "The distribution of puertorrican art in the museum represent a magnificent travel trough diferents parts of Puerto Rico history since Spanish discovery and colonization since 1493."