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Boletín de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras - INVEMAR

Print version ISSN 0122-9761

Bol. Invest. Mar. Cost. vol.46 no.2 Santa Marta July/Dec. 2017

https://doi.org/10.25268/bimc.invemar.2017.46.2.733 

Notes

Heteropods (Gastropoda: Pterotracheoidea) identified along a coastal-oceanic transect in the Colombian Pacific

María Moreno-Alcántara1 

Alan Giraldo2 

Gerardo Aceves-Medina1 

1 Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Centro Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Marinas, Departamento de Plancton y Ecología Marina. Avenida IPN s/n, La Paz, B.C.S, C.P. 23096, México. maria0328@yahoo.com, gaceves@ipn.mx

2 Universidad del Valle, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Exactas, Departamento de Biología. Grupo de Investigación en Ciencias Oceanográficas. Calle 13 # 100-00, Cali, Colombia. alan.giraldo@correounivalle.edu.co, oceanografia@correounivalle.edu.co.


ABSTRACT

With the purpose of establishing the taxonomic composition of the heteropod assembly that inhabits the Colombian Pacific, zooplankton samples were collected in March 2014 along a coastal- offshore transect and later analyzed. Twelve species belonging to three families and three genera were identified. Atlanta lesuerii was the most abundant species in the study area. In addition, A. frontieri, A. oligogyra, A. inflata and A. plana were recorded for the first time in the South American Pacific, as well as A. helicinoidea in the Colombian Pacific. This work contributes in a significant way in the knowledge of the heteropod molluscs of the Colombian Pacific.

Keywords: Marine diversity; Pelagic mollusks; Pterotracheoidea; Zooplankton; Heteropods

RESUMEN

Con el propósito de establecer la composición taxonómica del ensamblaje de heterópodos que habita en el Pacífico colombiano, se analizaron muestras de zooplancton recolectadas en marzo de 2014 a lo largo de un trayecto costa-océano. Se identificaron 12 especies pertenecientes a tres familias y tres géneros. Atlanta lesuerii fue la especie más abundante en el área de estudio. Además, se registran por primera vez a A. frontieri, A. oligogyra, A. inflata y A. plana en el Pacífico sudamericano, así como A. helicinoidea en el Pacífico colombiano. Este trabajo contribuye de manera significativa en el conocimiento de los moluscos heterópodos del Pacífico colombiano.

Palabras Clave: Diversidad marina; Moluscos pelágicos; Pterotracheoidea; Zooplancton; Heterópodos

Heteropods are holoplanktonic gastropods classified within the superfamily Pterotracheoidea, which comprises three families: Atlantidae, Carinariidae, and Pterotracheidae (Van der Spoel et al., 1997). Atlantidae has the highest richness of described species, followed by Pterotracheidae and Carinariidae (Richter and Seapy, 1999). These organisms exhibit morphological adaptations, such as a relatively large aragonite transparent shell in members of the Atlantidae, a reduced shell in Carinariidae species, and no shell in the Pterotracheidae species. Heteropods also developed a swimming fin derived from the foot (Lalli and Gilmer, 1989; Richter and Seapy, 1999).

Heteropods are considered as an important component in the energy transfer of pelagic environments, since they are preyed upon by sea turtles (e.g. Caretta caretta) and fish such as mahi-mahi (Coryphaena hippurus and C. equiselis) and yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares). But they also prey on copepods, fish larvae, salps, medusae, ctenophores, and some pteropods and heteropods (Russell, 1960; Seapy, 1980; Lalli and Gilmer, 1989; Junior et al., 2004; Vaske et al., 2012; Wall-Palmer et al., 2016).

Although these holoplanktonic gastropods are cosmopolitan (Lalli and Gilmer, 1989; Richter and Seapy, 1999), most species are distributed in warm waters (Lalli and Gilmer, 1989; Van der Spoel, 1996), which denotes the importance of studying holoplanktonic mollusks in tropical waters. Unfortunately, research on this taxonomic group for the warm waters of the eastern Pacific is scarce (Cruz 1983, 1998; Suárez-Morales et al., 2009). The few studies regarding heteropods in waters near the Colombian Pacific (CP) include the Panama Centre, the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, Ecuador and Peru (Van der Spoel, 1976; Cruz, 1983, 1996, 1998, 2012; Suárez-Morales et al., 2003; Ayón et al., 2008). In these studies, along with the only one that has been performed in the CP (Cediel-Parra et al., 1995), a total of 14 species have been reported, belonging to seven genera and three families, which represent approximately 40% of the 37 species of heteropods worldwide (Gofas, 2009). The tropical affinity of this taxonomic group, as well as the scarce research about the species composition and the abundance of these organisms in zooplankton samples in nearby areas, suggest the presence of more species than the ones already reported for the CP (12 before this study). Due to this, a study to analyze heteropods from zooplankton samples collected in the central Colombian Pacific in March 2014 was performed.

The zooplankton tows were done in eight sampling stations using a bongo net equipped with an Hydrobios® flow meter attached to the mouth of the net, with 60 cm mouth diameter and 300 µm mesh size. Oblique tows were performed during 10 minutes from a depth of 40 m to the surface. Sampling stations were 50 km apart and set along a linear transect parallel to 4ºN latitude, starting 20 km from the coastline off Bahía Málaga, Valle del Cauca, to 420 km off shore (Figure 1). Zooplankton samples were preserved and transported to the Animal Ecology laboratory of the Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia. All heteropods were separated from the samples, identified and counted using a dissecting microscope of 50x magnification. Abundance was standardized to individuals/1000 m3. All specimens are hosted at the holoplanktonic mollusks collection at Centro Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Marinas (IPN-CICIMAR), La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico.

Figure 1 Zooplankton sampling stations along 4°N in the Colombian Pacific Ocean. 

A total of 365 heteropods belonging to 12 species, three genera and three families were identified (Figure 2) using morphological criteria proposed by Seapy (1990) and Richter and Seapy (1999) based on the count of spires, general shell morphology and type of eye present. The taxonomic classification proposed by Richter and Seapy (1999) was followed (Table 1). The most abundant species was Atlanta lesueurii which represented 32.9% of the total specimens collected, followed by A. gaudichaudi (17.0%), A. peronii (9.9%), Cardiapoda placenta (9.6%), and Firoloida desmarestia (7.7%), which represented 76.9% of the total abundance.

Figure 2 Heteropods of the family Atlantidae obtained during the survey. A: Atlanta lesueurii; B: A. gaudichaudii; C: A. helicinoidea; D: A. inclinata; E: A. inflata; F: A. oligogyra; G: A. peronii; H: A. plana; I: A. frontieri; J: A. turriculata. Scale bar represents 1mm. 

Table 1 Heteropod species recorded in this work and the previous records for the Colombian Pacific and nearby areas. X: present; *: probable distribution; +: presence of the species group (as given by the author); 1: new record for the Southern American Pacific; 2: new record for the Colombian Pacific. The number in parenthesis is the percentage of abundance for each species. 

Although the maximum sampling depth does not cover the entire vertical distribution range of heteropods, table 1 shows that from a comparative analysis of the species composition reported in other research performed in the CP and surrounding areas, this study provides a new report for the CP (A. helicinoidea) and four new reports for the Southern American Pacific (A. frontieri, A. inflata, A. oligogyra y A. plana). This increases to 18 the total number of heteropods known from the area.

This increase of 10%, leading to 18 species, is significant if the low sampling effort is considered (eigth samples), compared to 20 species reported in the Gulf of Tehuantepec, 24 species for the Gulf of California, and 13 species in the Pacific off California and Baja California, where the sampling effort has been greater in two to three orders of magnitude (McGowan, 1967; Angulo-Campillo et al., 2011; Moreno-Alcántara et al., 2014). This leads to consider the CP as a region with high diversity, key to understanding the biogeographic patterns of heteropods worldwide.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank Andrés Cuellar for his help during sampling and the Malpelo Foundation for providing access to the sampling platform. This research was carried out within the framework of scientific expeditions for the monitoring of environmental and biological conditions of the Malpelo Fauna and Flora Sanctuary (FFS), oceanographic component, which is co-financed by the Malpelo Foundation, Malpelo FFS, and the Universidad del Valle. The first author thanks the Coordinación de Cooperación Académica of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional and CONACyT scholarships for economic support provided during her Masters studies and for her research visit to Colombia. The last author thanks SNI- CONACyT and the Instituto Politécnico Nacional for support through the EDI and COFAA scholarship systems and the SIP 20151160 and 20160625 institutional projects during this research project.

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Received: August 16, 2016; Accepted: June 08, 2017

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