Ryukyu

[ryoo-kyoo, ree-oo-kyoo]

noun

1. a chain of Japanese islands in the western Pacific Ocean between Japan and Taiwan. 3,120 square miles (1,205 square kilometers).

Word History and Origins

Origin of Ryukyu¹

First recorded in 1930–45; from Japanese Ryūkyū Shōto “Ryukyu Archipelago”

Example Sentences

In the wild, hermit crabs are foragers and scavengers, eating a tropical buffet that might include dead fish, fresh fruit, and even dog droppings, Shawn Miller, a naturalist and photographer on the Ryukyu Islands in Okinawa, Japan, told me.

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They conducted fieldwork during three flowering seasons between 2020 and 2022 on five islands of the Ryukyu Archipelago.

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Verified by Smithsonian experts as authentic artifacts of the erstwhile Ryukyu Kingdom, a 450-year-old dynasty that ruled in Okinawa as a tributary state of the Ming dynasty of China, the F.B.I. turned the items over to the U.S.

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Nature has been able to develop on its own terms here, far from both humans and the warm Kuroshio current, which acts like a shuttle, moving marine species from Taiwan, over the Ryukyu Islands, and up the Pacific coast of mainland Japan.

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The authors point to field experiments conducted by Japanese scientists in the Ryukyu Archipelago, during which A. ocellaris behaved aggressively much longer with models that had white vertical bars rather than models with white horizontal bars.

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