Another user of a package that uses rgbif reported I think the same problem https://github.com/ropensci/spocc/issues/187 

Best, Scott

On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 7:54 AM Scott Chamberlain <myrmecocystus@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, 

Users of rgbif have been reporting problems with geometry parameter in /occurrence route not working sometimes. It does indeed appear to work sometimes, but other times, it appears I think to be using latitude, but ignoring longitude. It's hard to give reproducible examples for command line or so, but here's a query where the longitude values appear to be all over the map, whereas latitude appear to be in the bounds.

https://api.gbif.org/v1/occurrence/search?limit=300&offset=0&geometry=POLYGON%28%28-0.1%2050.0%2C14.3%2050.0%2C14.3%2042.5%2C-0.1%2042.5%2C-0.1%2050.0%29%29& 

using hasGeospatialIssue doesn't appear to help so I'm guessing there could be user error on my part or perhaps something going on with geometry WKT usage?

Best, Scott