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

Abstract

The marine area of Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) contains a 43,000 ha formal marine protected area, a 732 ha special management zone in Bahía Santa Elena, and 150 km of wild protected coastline. In an effort to broaden the biodiversity knowledge of all marine taxa present in the area, an inventory was started in 2015 (BioMar-ACG Project). This initiative is being funded by the Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund (GDFCF) in collaboration with government staff at ACG, and is carried out by Centro de Investigación en Ciencias del Mar y Limnología (CIMAR, Center for Research in Marine Science and Limnology) and Museo de Zoología (Zoology Museum), both from Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR). After four years of the project, 2650 specimens of marine decapod crustaceans and stomatopods have been collected, belonging to 209 species, out of which 99 are new records for ACG, four may be new species and nine (Cyrtoplax panamensis, Glyptoxanthus labyrinthicus, Pachyches marcortezensis, Petrolisthes donadio, Pylopagurus holmesi, Synalpheus pinkfloydi, Typton granulosus, Zenopontonia soror, Neogonodactylus pumilus) are new records for Costa Rica. With this contribution the total number of decapods (257 spp.) and stomatopods (14 spp.) for ACG is 271 species, more than half the species reported for Costa Rica, and more than a quarter of all crustaceans reported for the eastern tropical Pacific. The high concentration of species in ACG may be attributed to the diversity of habitats, the seasonal upwelling and to the recent sampling efforts. In only four years, the BioMar-ACG has increased the number of species in these groups of crustaceans by 37% over the past 85 years of previous studies in the ACG.

Área de Conservación Guanacaste Echinoderms, North Pacific of Costa Rica

“…As found for other groups of marine organisms studied in the BioMar-ACG Project, echinoderms richness has been underestimated (Vargas-Castillo & Cortés, 2019;Cortés & Joyce, 2020). When compared to other marine areas of Costa Rica, like the Osa Peninsula and Isla del Coco, the ACG Marine Sector registered a low echinoderm mean diversity (Alvarado et al, 2017).…”

“…And several species that have not been found in any other location in the Central American Pacific. Defining itself as a site of great importance for echinoderm and other marine taxa conservation (Cortés, 2017;Vargas-Castillo & Cortés, 2019;Cortés & Joyce, 2020).…”

Decapod crustaceans associated with macroinvertebrates in Pacific Costa Rica

“…The species that showed the most associations with different hosts was Zenopontonia soror, which was found in five species of seastars (Table 1). This species was recently reported new to Costa Rica by Vargas-Castillo and Cortés (2019). The shrimp Pseudocoutierea elegans was found in hosts from three groups (Octocorallia, Hydrozoa, and Echinoidea).…”

Diversidad de los hábitats submareales de la Península de Santa Elena e Islas Murciélago, Pacífico Norte, Costa Rica

“…DISCUSIÓN Cortés (2017) hace referencia al desconocimiento y a los vacíos de información sobre la biodiversidad marina para el ACG en comparación con otras localidades del Pacífico costarricense. No obstante, en los últimos años el Proyecto BioMar-ACG (Cortés, 2017) ha realizado nuevos aportes a la diversidad marina de esta zona (Cortés & Joyce, 2020;Vargas & Cortés, 2019). Todos los hábitats que se trataron en esta investigación ya habían sido citados en trabajos previos (Cortés & Joyce, 2020;Vargas & Cortés, 2019); sin embargo, pocos trabajos describen la historia natural y diversidad específica para los mismos.…”

“…Recientemente, varios trabajos han recopilado la diversidad marina del Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG), enfocándose en la revisión de colecciones y literatura científica, así como del Proyecto BioMar-ACG (Chacón-Monge, Azofeifa-Solano, Alvarado, & Cortés, 2021;Cortés, 2017;Cortés & Joyce, 2020;Vargas & Cortés, 2019). No obstante, hay muy pocas investigaciones que estudien la diversidad de los bosques de Sargassum (ver Suárez, Riosmena-Rodríguez & Cortés, 2021) y de zonas arenosas a profundidades mayores de los 20 m, entre otros ambientes.…”