Winter field work in the Dominican republic

Welcome back to field work updates and stories gathered while doing my PhD field work in the Caribbean.

Golf ball retriever (in box) used to knock crown-giants off of canopy branches + 2 hockey bags full of equipment (backpack not pictured)

I will be spending the next month in the Dominican Republic doing field work to prepare for the full field season this summer. This trip is a “scouting trip” which means that we will primarily be finding good sites, learning key species identification, and figuring out logistics. All this is to prepare for the 6 week summer trip when we come back with 12 people to gather the bulk of the data. Unlike the summer trip, the team is much smaller this month. I will be joined by collaborators from the Frishkoff lab at UTA (post doc Dan Nicholson and PhD student Zack Lange) as well as from Grupo Jaragua, a Dominican conservation NGO.

Like in Puerto Rico, we will be at sites that span the elevational and climate extent of the island—from dry sites at sea level to high elevations with pine forests that are as cool as 9 deg Celsius. Unlike Puerto Rico, there is a larger elevational range (the highest mountains in the DR get snow!) and this means that there is much higher opportunity for allopatric speciation and consequently many more species of Anole (see this recent paper). Our species lists contain about 30 different species—so learning Anole identification which have a much steep learning curve than last summer. There is also a large diversity of frogs, birds, and plants… but I probably won’t spend as much time thinking about these taxa!

Also unlike previous field work, we will be predominantly camping which means less access to internet, cell reception, and showering. We will be based at numerous sites in the “southern paleo island” which in paleo timescales was separated from the Northern parts of Hispaniola by a shallow sea. This southern part of the island is distinct ecologically from the Northern part and has many cool species of Anole (but really lots of things) that aren’t found elsewhere on the island. Mountains and forests (and spiky bushes) here I come!