High elevation pine forests and drought

From our sites in Cachote, we wended our way inland and north to Puerto Escondido. In this region (near Lago Enriquillo if you’re looking at a map) we have study sites in the Sierra de Bahoruco National Park at low (520m) and high elevation (2000-2300m). The low elevation sites are hot and dry. In fact, they are probably drier than normal as it hasn’t rained properly thre in three years. Everything other than the EuroFresh avocado fields are dusty, plants are crispy, and leaves are wilted and brown.

While working at our sites outside of Puerto Escondido, we stayed at Villa Barancolli —an ecolodge run by Kate Wallace, an 84 year old birder who has lived in the DR since the 90s running birding tours high in the mountains. Joined by roosters, cats, dogs, chicks, and puppies, I (almost) took delight in the tarantulas that shared my room. Tarantulas are sit-and-wait predators which means that they were reliably sitting in the same spot every night—much better than if they were there and then suddenly not... plus if I have tarantulas roommates, there are probably not other creepy-crawly's that have a more fearsome bite. Plus, field-work is exhausting. I challenge anyone to stay awake a minute longer than necessary in the midst of a field season.

While we did not find Anolis landestoyi—one of the coolest anoles ever—we did find a new (to us) species of crown-giant: Anolis ricordii.

From Puerto Escondido we took the road up, up, up to Zapoten and Loma del Toro, a gain of nearly 2000m in about 30km. This road transitions from round rocks of river stones, to sharp bedrock, with hair-raising turns. Or at least, they would have beeen hair-raising if we were moving faster than 15km/hr. At high elevations, it was windy and very cold. Pine trees dotted with lichen and bromeliads dominate with an understory composed of agave and pockets of wild fuchsias.

Each tree bears a fire-scar and some have machete marks where people have carved out sections for fire-wood. These forests are some of the remnant habitats for the nests of the endangered diablotín (Black-capped petrel), a nocturnal sea-bird that has ground-nests at high elevations. As of 2015, only 1,000-2,000 pairs remain. Lucky for us we are working with a diablotín expert here and got to see a diablotín in its nest.

At these elevations, finding an Anole is a bonus. In other regions of the island, the temperatures at night in the mountains (average 9 degrees Celsius before wind chill) are just too cold for Anoles. However, after hours of searching a lucky break in the clouds we were able to find and catch Anolis armouri, a high-elevation specialist. A. armouri has distinct behaviour--rather than perching on the trunk of trees - which are often charred black and warm up very quickly in the sun - they sun themselves like mermaids on rocks.

In the morning, when the sun first comes out, they are dark black, perhaps to more efficiently warm up in the sun? As we approached them, they darted quickly into the crevasses under and in the rocks. This made catching them a pain as they are often aware of us several meters before we've seen them. My thought is maybe A. armouri prefer the rocks either because they are better for predator and biologist avoidance or maybe the rocky crevasses hold the heat better than the tree trunks at night.

Rather than describe in prose my experience at these high elevation sites, here's a piece I wrote which describes my experiences.