A Review on the Biodiversity and Biogeography of Toxigenic Benthic Marine Dinoflagellates of the Coasts of Latin America

Abstract

Many benthic dinoflagellates are known or suspected producers of lipophilic polyether phycotoxins, particularly in tropical and subtropical coastal zones. These toxins are responsible for diverse intoxication events of marine fauna and human consumers of seafood, but most notably in humans, they cause toxin syndromes known as diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (DSP) and ciguatera fish poisoning (CFP). This has led to enhanced, but still insufficient, efforts to describe benthic dinoflagellate taxa using morphological and molecular approaches. For example, recently published information on epibenthic dinoflagellates from Mexican coastal waters includes about 45 species from 15 genera, but many have only been tentatively identified to the species level, with fewer still confirmed by molecular criteria. This review on the biodiversity and biogeography of known or putatively toxigenic benthic species in Latin America, restricts the geographical scope to the neritic zones of the North and South American continents, including adjacent islands and coral reefs. The focus is on species from subtropical and tropical waters, primarily within the genera Prorocentrum, Gambierdiscus/Fukuyoa, Coolia, Ostreopsis and Amphidinium. The state of knowledge on reported taxa in these waters is inadequate and time-series data are generally lacking for the prediction of regime shift and global change effects. Details of their respective toxigenicity and toxin composition have only recently been explored in a few locations. Nevertheless, by describing the specific ecosystem habitats for toxigenic benthic dinoflagellates, and by comparing those among the three key regions-the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea and the subtropical and tropical Pacific coast, insights for further risk assessment of the global spreading of toxic benthic species is generated for the management of their effects in Latin America.

Diversity and Toxicity of the Genus Coolia Meunier in Brazil, and Detection of 44-methyl Gambierone in Coolia tropicalis

“…Until quite recently, the distribution of benthic dinoflagellates was poorly documented in Brazilian waters, with the genus Coolia, represented at that time by C. malayensis, found exclusively along the southeastern coast [21]. Recent studies, however, have documented a larger number of species (C. malayensis, C. tropicalis and C. canariensis), occurring over a wider geographical distribution, including the south [12], southeast [26,28] and northeast [27,28] sectors of the Brazilian coast.…”

“…The most widely distributed species within the genus is C. malayensis, found in every ocean on both tropical and temperate zones [14,21,22]. Other species like C. tropicalis, C. canariensis and C. palmyrensis are present in both Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but they are likely restricted to tropical areas [19,[22][23][24].…”

Associated Bacteria and Their Effects on Growth and Toxigenicity of the Dinoflagellate Prorocentrum lima Species Complex From Epibenthic Substrates Along Mexican Coasts

“…The epiphytic relationship between the dinoflagellate and host, in the case of macroalgal substrates, can be speciesspecific or defined by the host morphology (Parsons and Preskitt, 2007). Benthic Prorocentrum species are typically rather sessile epiphytes but can also thrive and survive dispersal over long distances upon floating detritus ("rafting") (Faust, 2004;Durán-Riveroll et al, 2019). Although ecophysiological information about benthic Prorocentrum species is limited from field populations, some physiological parameters and associated growth responses to key environmental factors, such as light availability, photoperiod, temperature, salinity, and nutrients, have been well described in laboratory studies (Morton et al, 1994;Pan et al, 1999; references cited in Hoppenrath et al, 2013).…”

<em>Ostreopsis</em> cf. <em>ovata</em> and <em>Ostreopsis lenticularis</em> (Dinophyceae: Gonyaulacales) in the Galapagos Marine Reserve

“…The absence of these specific data prevents accurate determination of the potential impacts on marine ecosystems and human health because morphological features are not sufficient to describe a species, and toxin production is unevenly distributed among species and even among strains of the same species (Litaker et al 2010, Suzuki et al 2012, Carnicer et al 2016a. This is the case for the eastern tropical Pacific (ETP), where there is little information on toxic benthic dinoflagellates (Durán-Riveroll et al 2019). This area of the globe is of special concern because the marine ecosystem is sensitive to climate change and to El Niño-Southern Oscillation events (Edgar et al 2010), affecting biodiversity due to changing temperatures and rainfall that, in turn, can influence the distribution of certain species that can adapt to new conditions (Keith et al 2016).…”

“…In the last two decades, the geographical area of the study of potentially toxic benthic dinoflagellates has increased considerably (Hachani et al 2018, Irola-Sansores et al 2018, Durán-Riveroll et al 2019 and references therein). However, observations on marine diversity are still lacking from low latitudes, which have hitherto been overlooked by the scientific community (Menegotto and Rangel 2018).…”