Marine biodiversity baseline for Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica: published records

Abstract

The diversity of tropical marine organisms has not been studied as intensively as the terrestrial biota worldwide. Additionally, marine biodiversity research in the tropics lags behind other regions. The 43,000 ha Sector Marino of Área de Conservación Guanacaste ( ACG , Marine Sector of Guanacaste Conservation Area), on the North Pacific coast of Costa Rica is no exception. For more than four decades, the terrestrial flora and fauna has been studied continuously. The ACG marine biodiversity was studied in the 1930’s by expeditions that passed through the area, but not much until the 1990’s, except for the marine turtles. In the mid 1990’s the Center for Research in Marine Science and Limnology ( CIMAR ) of the Universidad de Costa Rica ( UCR ) initiated the exploration of the marine environments and organisms of ACG . In 2015, ACG , in collaboration with CIMAR , started the BioMar project whose goal is to inventory the species of the marine sector of ACG (BioMar ACG project). As a baseline, here I have compiled the published records of marine ACG species, and found that 594 marine species have been reported, representing 15.5% of the known species of the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. The most diverse groups were the crustaceans, mollusks and cnidarians comprising 71.7% of the ACG species. Some taxa, such as mangroves and fish parasites are well represented in ACG when compared to the rest of the Costa Rican coast but others appear to be greatly underrepresented, for example, red algae, polychaetes, copepods, equinoderms, and marine fishes and birds, which could be due to sampling bias. Thirty species have been originally described with specimens from ACG , and 89 species are not known from other localities on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica except ACG . Most of the sampling has been concentrated in a few localities in Sector Marino, Playa Blanca and Islas Murciélago, and in the nearby waters of Bahía Santa Elena. In an effort to fill this gap, CIMAR is collaborating with ACG and a private foundation to start an inventory of the marine organisms of the conservation area. The project will be assisted by two marine parataxonomists, and all samples will be catalogued, photographed, bar coded and voucher specimens deposited at the Museo de Zoología, UCR . All the information will be available through Internet. It is anticipated that the BioMar project will fill many of the knowledge gaps and significantly more marine species will be encountered. This project could become a viable model for marine biodiversity inventories in other Costa Rican Conservation Areas (Áreas de Conservación) and in other countries.

Cuando la conservación no puede seguir el ritmo del desarrollo: Estado de salud de los ecosistemas coralinos del Pacífico Norte de Costa Rica

“…Los esfuerzos de investigación biológica en el Pacífico Norte de Costa Rica se han enfocado principalmente en los arrecifes coralinos, comunidades coralinas y zooplancton (Cortés, 2012(Cortés, , 2017. Muy pocos estudios han sido dirigidos a interpretar aspectos ecológicos de macroinvertebrados en la zona, a excepción de algunos que se enfocaron en especies particulares como Lobatus galeatus (Arroyo-Mora, 1998), A. pulvinata (Alvarado, 2008) y P. gracilis (Naranjo-Madrigal, 2011).…”

New records of marine decapods and stomatopods in Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG): four years of marine biodiversity inventorying

“…1i). Cortés (2017) reported 172 species from ACG, 162 decapods and 10 stomatopods. In this study 209 species have been collected so far, 200 decapods and 9 stomatopods.…”

“…In this study 209 species have been collected so far, 200 decapods and 9 stomatopods. Of the decapod species reported by Cortés (2017), 57 species of decapods and 5 species of stomatopod have not been collected yet. These belong mainly to organisms commonly found at depths greater than 40 m, that were collected by dredging.…”

“…ACG has more than half the species reported for Costa Rica and about a quarter of decapods and stomatopods crustaceans reported for the ETP (Boschi 2000;Cortés et al 2017) (Table 3). The high diversity of decapods and stomatopods at ACG may be due to the diversity of habitats: beaches of different wave and sediment regimes, islands and continental shorelines, mangrove forests, seagrass beds, coral reefs (live and dead), intertidal and submerged rocky platforms, sandy and muddy bottoms and deep areas (Cortés 2017). The region is exposed to season upwelling, with temperatures ranging from 15°to 30°C (Cortés et al 2014).…”

“…The project has also received necessary support from the government staff of ACG, local marine "parataxonomists" supported by GDFCF and private foundations. Following the compilation on marine biodiversity in ACG published by Cortés (2017), this paper presents an update of the inventory of marine decapod crustaceans and stomatopods, with new records for ACG as well as new records for the country. This is the result of work from mid 2015 to early 2019 by the BioMar-ACG project.…”