Within the last hour, Giraldo Alayon Garcia identified a spider never before recorded in the Dominican Republic, yet exists in the amber fossil record. The exciting discovery of the Plectreurys, was found in a sample expertly collected by Lauren Esposito under a rock on a hillside in Monte Cristi national park.  Giraldo states, “The discovery of this spider is the highlight of my entire trip!” Giraldo, leaves the team tomorrow in high spirits and with the intention of describing the species upon his return to Cuba.

The team currently resides above 6,000 ft elevation in Parque Valle Nuevo. Arriving here was no menial task, especially for the vehicles without 4x4. Fragments of undercarriages were undoubtedly left behind as the SUVs bottomed out on the deep furrows in the dirt road steadily climbing the mountainside. Fortunately our rustic accommodations at the summit, free of electricity aside from a few hours of solar, provided a nice place to sleep and breathtaking panoramas.

The habitat here is primarily pine forest scattered with evergreen broadleaves. Each evening the temperature drops drastically to a degree where warm jackets and hot cocoa are necessities, an oddity in the Caribbean. Spider diversity here is fascinating and collection has been extraordinarily fun and fast passed.  Today thirteen of the team overflowed the seats of the pickup and into the bed as we traveled deeper into the park. We collected at three localities along the way, one being the proposed center of the island marked by 4 pyramids and another legitimately named Jurassic Park. Despite an irrational fear of pterodactyls lurking above the tree fern canopy, the team proceeded to fill vials with amazing specimens. In a few hours we will return to this site for night collecting. Tomorrow, we move to a new locality.

The final two days of outreach week went smoothly: by this time, the team was well polished in conveying the awe of arachnid diversity to Dominican and Haitian children of all ages. The team’s camaraderie persevered, even after the departure of Ingi Agnarsson who left Wednesday evening to return to Puerto Rico.

On Thursday, we visited an orphanage with 25 boys in Jaibon, about an hour outside of Monte Cristi. Despite countless stories of hardship, these boys excelled in carrying out our eight-legged curriculum. Three of the boys had been found abandoned in a vehicle just a few days prior to our arrival. The habitat here was quite different, and Argiope, an araneid rarely found on our expedition was collected in the garden. At the end of the day, the boys serenaded the group with a couple of songs and a guitar.

On Friday, we lead a group of kid’s at a learning center in Monte Cristi through their neighborhood to collect. Despite poor habitat on the city streets littered with trash, we discovered many interesting specimens. Collecting was quickly followed by time using the microscopes. That afternoon, Greta Binford and Father Elmond departed for Puerto Plata after lunch, and the team returned to collecting. Night collecting was lovely, aside from millions of hungry mosquitos: after an exciting, challenging week of working with children, it was a nice change of pace to return to the relative simplicity of collecting solo. Furthermore, last night reaped fruitful samples including a new record for scorpions in the region, several elusive Solifuges and many fascinating araneids.

This week we’ve focused on educational outreach targeting underprivileged Dominican and Haitian children. So far, we’ve visited three different schools in the Puerto Plata area, and will now spend Thursday and Friday at two orphanages in Monte Cristi, near the Haitian border. We have begun each day with a brief survey to assess the children’s initial comprehension of biodiversity, arachnids and science, followed by a presentation, and then a trip to the field collecting anything with eight legs! This is the highlight for the team and the children, who have ranged from 2-18 years old.  Nearly every kid, no matter age or gender, has shown tremendous excitement in collecting, searching in every shrub and under every rock, no doubt providing a new perspective to their familiar schoolyard or nearby bosque (forest). After a lunch break, we returned to look at the spiders found in the morning under microscopes, explaining anatomy and pointing out the diversity of what was collected. We also worked with the children to create a local field guide using a picture they took of a spider and their notes on the habitat and physical characteristics of the animal. These field guides were printed, laminated and left with the school as a long lasting impression. 

The first school, Los Blancos, was filled with 67 Dominican and Haitian children crowded inside a concrete structure at the end of a dirt road. Despite uncomfortable conditions, each face glowed with enthusiasm, and imagination. This group was especially rambunctious and tested the abilities of our team, who succeeded wonderfully in manifesting a day of opportunity and discovery. Day two was spent at San Marcos, a middle school with better-behaved participants.  These children were already on summer vacation and came to school by their own free will, resulting in a crowd of over 60. The school today was attended by a group of Haitian refugees, some fighting for Dominican citizenship. These children needed far more help than we could provide with a day of activities, yet we earnestly hope our efforts may motivate some to seek opportunities outside those immediately presented to them, such as continued education.  Tomorrow we move to Monte Cristi, on the frontier of the Haitian border to work with two orphanages. The challenge of outreach is well worth it, with the hope that our efforts make some difference in the lives of these underprivileged children.

Our final day in Parque Nacional Los Haitises, June 12, was a day of arachnology adventure! The group of 15 divided into two teams to cover different habitat types. Half used kayaks to search through the largest mangrove forest in the country, an entirely new habitat for the project, while the others journeyed by speed boat to caves. While filled with bat guano, dark stagnant water and many other lovely things, several new records for Hispañola were found and identified. During the spelunking-collection, Greta Binford had a close encounter with a Loxosceles on her ear and a rabid-looking bat on her leg.

The following day was filled with an adventure of another kind. On a map, the drive from Los Haitises to Reserva Cientifica Loma Quita Espuela appeared straight forward, yet proved otherwise. After dropping off Solanlly Carrero in Hato Mayor, the team set out on a “short cut” through tertiary dirt roads asking at least 15 locals for directions, eventually fording a river, removing a boulder from the road, and fixing a flat tire. Meanwhile, Solanlly travelled significantly further by bus, stopping through Santo Domingo on the southern coast to acquire boots and visit family, and then headed northward to San Francisco de Macorís. However, after the eventful drive, she arrived only 10 minutes after the caravan driving “directly”.  An anticipated three hour drive extended beyond eight hours.

The forest of Loma Quita Espuela has made up for the difficult travel. On June 14, the group hiked up the main trail through the park, climbing over 700 vertical meters through varying degrees of ecological disturbance, with pristine primary growth near the summit, yielding an incredible diversity and possibly new species. This was the most arduous hike of the trip, and for recovery the team decided to join the locals in the community pool before sorting leaf litter and samples. At night, “the heroes” of the group conquered the hill again in search of orb-weavers and scorpions, encountering many Deinopis constructing their curious webs. Our final day at this location was spent exploring a nearby cave system once inhabited by the Taino indigenous people and sorting our backlog of specimens before moving to Puerto Plata to begin the outreach portion of the trip. 

After a repeat collection trip to Cueva de Seibo, the CarBio team is currently processing oodles of specimens, some exciting but expected (like amblypygids and Loxosceles) and others that are completely new to science such as blind Ctenidae and (probably) Dipluridae. Outside the cave, we have found at least 5 species of Micrathena, many new types of scorpions, amblypygids (likely unique from those found in the cave) and many other intriguing specimens too numerous to list.

The Dominican children we met on Thursday have returned twice to help with leaf litter sorting. Today the children were on a field trip in Parque Nacional del Este with their local school and one of the girls brought a collection of spiders including Gasteracantha.

This is our last night here,  and after finishing sorting and processing we will pack up and move tomorrow to Parque Nacional los Haitises.

We've had an excellent day in the Dominican Republic. We found the first blind ctenid spider ever found in the New World, discovered several other new species to science, had many Dominican kids enthusiastically join in our collecting and sorting - who knows, perhaps future arachnologists, and on top we are all having a very good time doing this.

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Today, team members worked with curious kids in the neighborhood and in the field to collect and identify spiders and to sort through leaf litter. This unintentional act of outreach brought both parties joy, and  some of the children promised to return tomorrow for more.  

The past several days of collecting in the Parque Nacional Del Este of the Dominican Republic have yielded incredible success. In only three days, over half of our 54 target taxa has been processed. We have now found the first eyeless spider ever documented in the Dominican Republic. Dry, coastal scrub forest and extensive pristine limestone cave systems have been the primary habitats scoured thus far. It was in one of these caves, alongside myriad Loxoceles, amblypygids, pholcides and other troglodytes where the blind spider was found. The creature didn’t see us coming! The forest outside the caves is also teaming with life, including the rare genus Nops, in the Caponidae family and a possible new species of scorpion. 

The team has successfully assembled in Santo Domingo. Ingi Agnarsson and Zamira Yusseff from The University of Puerto Rico; Lauren Esposito, Micah Machina and Angela Chuang from University of California, Berkeley; Giraldo Alayon from the National Natural History Museum of Cuba and Greta Binford, Anne McHugh, Trevor Bloom, Ian Petersen, Katy Loubet-Senear, and Alex Nishida from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Having now procured three vehicles, after hours stuck in Santo Domingo rush hour traffic and negotiation we will be heading to the field for collecting! The first site is Del Este National Park in the southeast part of the Dominican Republic.