Population dynamics of Ctenosaura bakeri

The Ctenosaura bakeri is an iguana species endemic to the island of Utila, a small island off the eastern coast of Honduras. It is currently one of the species of the genus Ctenosaura most threatened with extinction, having its conservation status labelled as "Critically Endangered" by the IUCN Red List. The goals of this paper are to give some insights on the intrinsic trend of the whole population and to analyse the influence of the greater threats to the survival of the species (such as sex dependent hunting and habitat destruction). We will use a transition matrix approach to investigate the intrinsic trend of the population and we will provide arguments for the estimation of the different parameters. For the influence of the threats we will take a deterministic approach using systems of ODEs and DDEs, investigating the stationary points and their stability and giving prediction through simulations for the evolution of the population. We will also introduce a model for the occurence of hybridization with another iguana species of the island. The achieved results are summarized and still open questions stated at the end.