The third region we explored this trip is the Cachote, in the Sierra de Bahoruco National Park. This part of the southern Dominican Republic is extraordinarily mountainous, with steep slopes leading directly down to the ocean. Agriculture, homes, and roads need to be precariously carved into the mountain side. While we were staying at an airbnb in the town of La Cienaga at sea level, our study sites were an hour drive up into the mountains overlooking the ocean at about 1200 meters.
Along the drive up, along some of the worst roads I have ever seen, the forest transitions from dry scrub, to mixed agriculture of banana, coffee, and chocolate, to semi-undisturbed forest within the park. Up at this elevation, epiphytes and bromeliads rule the forest. The trees are often short and covered in mosses and lichens. Ferns of many types blanket the ground. At night, clouds roll in such that we could see beads of condensation in the beam of our headlamps. While the internet tells me that Cachote is a cloud forest, and while there were certainly clouds, many of the trees were taller than I normally associate with cloud forests. Any experts, feel free to weigh in.
Unfortunately, the hillsides were peppered with plumes of smoke. There were fires burning on most slopes and each turn in the road brought a fresh waft of smoke. People burn the forests here for at least two reasons—to clear land for agriculture (technically illegal in the park) and as acts of vandalism. As far as I can tell, the region near the park is owned by an organization that is “managing” the land and not treating local folks well. In protest, people are setting fire to the forest in, and adjacent to, the park. While there is a firefighting service (we saw the vehicles) I suspect there are too many fires to put out in places that are inaccessible to cars. So the fires just burn. As it's the dry season, I suspect they burn until they run out of fuel. In forest stands that have been recently burned, the recovering habitats are dominated by pine trees, which puts our last sites, and all the pine forests, slightly into perspective.
Despite the fires and the road, we found some really beautiful anoles (eg., Anolis bahorucoensis and Anolis coelstinus). While it was hard to spot lizards in the forests (low visibility), there were plentiful anoles on trunks about 3 meters up along the road. At night, anoles are often easier to see as they sleep on leaves and ferns and almost glow under a flashlight. This led to a successful night survey where we walked along the road picking anoles out of bushes and trees to collect for our fecal sampling. While sleeping anoles are easy to hand-catch (rather than with a pole and noose), they often sleep out of (my) reach. When an anole is 4m or higher in the forest canopy, standard research protocol is to use a stick or golf ball retriever to gently knock them off their branch. And then it’s a mad dash to catch the falling lizard.
One thing that is super cool about anoles is that different sets of species have different behaviour, morphology, and occupy different locations in the structural microhabitat (ie on a trunk, in the canopy, on grasses). For example, grass-bush anoles tend to sit in the stems of bushes or grasses, they have longer tails and shorter forelimbs, and have long slender faces and bodies. Trunk-ground anoles on the other hand tend to either be on trunks (or the ground) perching head down and have big blocky heads (think bulldogs). Crown-giants, as you can maybe guess, are the biggest anoles and are found in the canopies of trees. They are usually caught at night because that is when they are the easiest to see. The highlight anole of Cachote was finding not one, but two (!) Anolis barahonae. A male of this species can grow up to 160 mm (not including tail).
One of the highlights of this site (other than the anoles, claro que sí), was catching lizards up at the top of the mountain on the property of a woman and her children. She seemed a little mystified as to why we might want catch the lizards but she was totally game to have us wander around her property and helped us find several different individuals.
the image of fires in these precious forests makes me very sad. How lucky you are to be in healthy forests with such magical creatures. Love the image of you making a mad dash to catch falling lizards...