Dominican Republic - iNaturalist World Tour

The Dominican Republic is the 65th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour! The top observer @lljohnson is based in Altamira in the northern part of the island and has a keen interest in butterflies and moths. You can read more about @lljohnson in this Observation of the Week post about a beautiful tiger moth she spotted. @lljohnson is very involved in the Butterflies and Moths of Hispaniola project administered by @ronsavage. @ronsavage is the second top observer who as part of his global travels has done lots of field work all over the Dominican Republic. The third top observer, @anacarohdez, is a marine biology student from the capital of Santo Domingo. Her observations are mostly taken underwater at dive sites like Bahia de las Calderas. @maribela is a resident of the Dominican Republic with observations clustered around Arroyo Frio at, 1,200m altitude, towards the center of the island. There are several top observers with observations clustered around the capital of Santo Domingo including biology students @mack911 and @patriciatorrespineda and @rossdesign. Visitors @heatherpickard and @crx2aj3 have observations clustered at the northern point of Puerto plata and the eastern point of Punto Cana respectively.

The number of observations per month has been slowly ramping up since mid 2016 and broke 1,000 obs per month for the first time in June of this year.

@mack911 is the top identifier in addition to being a top observer. @mack911 also leads in the insect and herp categories. Insects is likely the category with the most observations because of the interest among the top observers, such as @lljohnson, in butterflies and moths. The mysterious @greenline is the 2nd top identifier and leads in plant and arachnid identifications. @joshuagsmith third top identifier and leads in birds. Top identifiers @mreith and @patriciatorrespineda have lent a lot of local Hispaniolan expertise from nearby Haiti and the Dominican Republic respectively. Thanks to all the other top identifiers of Dominican Republic observations!

What can we do to get more people in the Dominican Republic involved in iNaturalist? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread

@lljohnson @ronsavage @anacarohdez @andreinavt @maribela @mack911 @greenline @joshuagsmith @mreith @patriciatorrespineda

We’ll be back tomorrow in nearby Cuba!

Posted on August 27, 2019 08:28 PM by loarie