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gavia72

Cloud forests and organized chaos

Updated: Jul 22, 2023


Gear spread out at the airbnb the first night in Santo Domingo

Hola y bienvenidos a la Republica Dominicana. Voy a estar en este país por casi dos meses para trabajar con las lagartijas para mi doctorado. Hay muchas personas (15) en mi grupo y tres equipos con temas de investigación diferentes. Hay un equipo de Texas que estudia las ranas, uno equipo de los Pais Bajos, y mi equipo con estudiantes de Canadá y los Estados-Unidos. Para las semanas primeras, los dos profesores del investigación están trabajando con nosotros también. Después ellos de que se vayan, yo y un post-doc de Texas son los lideres. Tenemos muchos “gear” para nuestro trabajo y cinco carros—este trabajo es mucho para organizar.

plot survey bag, temp gun, binocs, paint can, walkie-talkie and 30 (?) year old arcteryx fanny pack courtesy of my parents

The research we are doing this summer is similar to that of Puerto Rico last year: we are collecting community ecology data on Anolis lizards (anoles) as part of an ongoing and multi-year project spanning Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Jamaica. On each of these islands, we identify plots (15m radius circles) of representative habitat at different elevations and then characterize what anole species are found there and in what abundance. Basically, we have sites that are all combinations of hot, cold, wet, and dry from sea-level to the tops of mountains. We also collect data on habitat use (how high the lizards are off the ground, what are they perching upon), what they eat (we pop lizards into a bag and then collect their poop), and prey availability.

Anolis barahonae (male)

This summer, we are returning to locations in the southern part of the DominicanRepublic that we identified in a trip during the winter (see previous posts for details). To get to the town of La Cienaga, where we are staying for our first site, we drove from Punta Cana to Santo Domingo, and then from Santo Domingo to here. It was a two day process and some of the most chaotic, free-for-all driving of my life. Let’s just say it is good that I have fast reflexes and no road rage.


One of my tasks this summer is grocery shopping and meal planning for the team. While buying the right amount of food for 15 people is certainly a challenge, this task is complicated by the fact that La Cienaga (population 9,213 in 2019) only has colmados—neighbourhood grocery stores. Colmados vary in size from a tiny room where you wait at a counter and point at what you want to supercolmados, where, in the larger cities, there may be aisles and grocery carts. Barahona, the closest big city to us (population 84,529 in 2019), has many supercolmados. At the local colmados, when I’m shopping for 15 people I frequently purchase the entire quantity of cheese, salami, or tomatoes in the store. Furthermore, each colmado only carries certain items—this week I drove to four different colmados in La Cienaga before finding one that sold cheese.


It has also been a challenge to buy fruits and vegetables, as there are often none available in the colmados and supercolmados. Being the scientist that I am, I came up with two non exclusive theories, which I then tested.

Anolis bahorucoensis (male)

Theory 1: colmados have produce in the morning, which then sell out through the day. Since I go shopping whenever I can squeeze it in, and almost never early in the morning, I simply miss the vegetables.


Theory 2: colmados are not the main source of fruits and vegetables. Rather, trucks full of produce drive around and if you happen to be nearby, you wave them down to buy what you need. The same system applies to men walking around carrying fish and women with baskets of avocados. As well, there are ephemeral stands at the side of the road that sell squash, plantains, bananas, and other fruits. If you happen to drive past one, success! Otherwise, no fruits for you. This presents a challenge, because during field work we spend almost all of our waking hours standing in the forest, which means we have a low probability of encountering either the produce trucks or the road-side vendors.


In conclusion, I have found both theories to be true. This week I made a specific point of going to colmados before 9am and lo and behold—there were tomatoes! And peppers! And a celery-type plant! Plus, we hit the timing just right to hit up the road-side vendors for squash and avocados.


While we are staying in town at sea level, our study sites this week are at about 1200m elevation in the cloud forest. The road up to the sites, while better now than it was in February, is definitely quatro por quatro only. Unfortunately, my car for the summer is a 2-wheel drive city SUV. Cue getting stuck in the mud, stalling on steep hills, and lots of pushing the car. Luckily the team has one pickup truck. For surveying these sites, we all pile into the cab and truck bed for the hour drive up the mountain. Even more luckily, it hasn’t rained on us while in transit.

Hispaniolan Emerald (Chlorostilbon swainsonii)

In the cloud forests of Cachote, the forest vegetation is incredibly complex. This has two effects, one, it is very challenging to move through and in during surveys. There are vines, ferns, logs, moss. Each step has to be planned and thought through in order to avoid getting tangled in the underbrush (this makes me very happy, the more moss and ferns the happier I am). The second consequence of the tangle of vegetation is that it is very hard to see anoles. Sight lines are diminished and it is hard to look at every piece of vegetation form all sides. Combine this with the fact that abundances are lower naturally at higher elevations, it means that at best I see two individuals in two hours of surveying a 706.9 square meter area. However, the lizards that we DO see are super cool (crown-giants and brightly coloured grass-bush anoles). Plus, because I am actively searching the forest, I also discover other gems—sleeping hummingbirds on their nests, bromeliads in flower in the forest canopy, and frogs (video of Eleutherodactylus armstrongi) calling from underneath leaves.

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2 Comments


Guest
Jul 05, 2023

Such a rich adventure. Would love to see that crown-giant.

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sue
Jul 05, 2023

I love your posts, Gavia. Well written, interesting, sometimes funny, vivid. Keep having figuring things out and having fun.

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