The first five sites we’ve been to on this trip were “successful” from our scientific perspective. We caught a decent number of individuals across the breadth of species found at each locality. This is important because one, it means we can focus less on catching lizards this summer and two, it means that we learn the breadth of species found at each site, how to identify them, and any site-specific behaviour patterns.
As well, at each of these sites, we identified specific plots to come back to and survey in detail this summer with the full team. These plots have a 15m radius and contain representative habitat of the surrounding areas and, hopefully, representative anole diversity. It can be difficult to find potential plots because they need to be traversable for an enthusiastic human—relatively flat and without a too dense understory. If we are sampling in the mountains it can be really hard to find enough flat ground. As well, we want duplicates of these plots, 4 in undisturbed forests and 2 in pastures or disturbed habitats.
Finding areas of land that fit all of these criteria and are an easy walk between, and within radio signal of, each other can be, uh, slightly challenging. Identifying these plots and doing some preliminary set-up (flagging the perimeter, collecting data on understory and canopy structure etc) was a major goal of this trip.
And for the first 5 sites of this trip, we were able to do all of this. We’ve learned how to identify the anoles on this part of the island, we’ve identified plots, collected data and talked to land-owners. However, from these two perspectives the last two sites, and where we are now on the opposite side of the country, have been more challenging. Our potential study area in the mountains above of La Descubierta was abandoned due to inaccessibility and potential issues with security.
In Polo, a beautiful town in the Barahona province, we were unable to find potential survey areas for the summer, even though we caught almost 50 lizards. Polo is an area renowned for its coffee—every fall there is a coffee festival. However, this means is that every flat valley bottom and steep mountain slope is covered in shade-grown coffee farms. We drove down, up, and along every single road and horse track leading from town and were unable to find a single unmodified forest.
There’s a bit of cognitive dissonance in this, visually the town and mountains are beautiful. There are tall remanent trees, coffee plants, avocado trees, cacao, and bananas that mix together to create the matrix of farms. Visually, the hills are awash in different colours and textures of green. However, none of it is forest. All is farmed and intensely managed. Maybe the anoles and birds don’t mind as there are still variety of plant heights and perch sizes, although depending on the amount of pesticide use there is almost certainly an impact on biodiversity.
And more clearing is happening, we passed many new areas being cleared and burned to start more farms or areas with newly planted coffee with tiny little plants. In this valley, we could find no forest, the remnant forests on impassable cliffs was highly impacted. This has been an ongoing theme: it can be hard to impossible to find undisturbed forests. Even at the edge and within national parks and protected areas, large swatches of forest have been converted into farms.
Coffee, chocolate, avocados, bananas... few of us can say we don't enjoy some or all of these
Gavi: What is the life history of the coffee? who owns the farms? who works them? where does the coffee end up?