Polychaetes from Burdwood Bank: Namuncurá Marine Protected Area and slope.

BREMEC C.; ELIAS R.; CALLA; GENZANO; PUENTE TAPIA F; SCHEJTER L.

REVISTA DE BIOLOGíA TROPICAL

REVISTA DE BIOLOGIA TROPICAL

Lugar: Turrialba; Año: 2019 vol. 65 p. 119 - 125

0034-7744

ABSTRACT. Introduction: The first open-sea (non-coastal) Marine Protected Area in Argentina, named?Namuncurá I? (NMPA), was created in 2013 at Burdwood Bank (BB), an undersea plateau located about200 km south from Malvinas Islands (Falkland Islands) and 150 km east from Staten Island, SW AtlanticOcean. It comprises three different management areas: the central one (?core?, strict protection, only controland monitoring activities), surrounded by a ?buffer? area (authorized activities, e.g. scientific research) andan external ?transition? area (productive and extractive activities contemplated in the Management Plan).Beyond the transition area, only the southern shelf-break is protected, after the creation of the ?Namuncurá II?MPA in December 2018. Objective: provide the inventory of polychaetes collected during 2016 and 2017 atthe core (98 m depth), buffer (128 m depth), transition (133 m-189 m depth) areas of the Namuncurá I MPA,together with slope areas (220 m-798 m depth). Methods: taken with a trawl net used to characterize the faunalassemblages and to compare results with other Magellan areas. Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) and ClusterAnalysis (CA) were applied to a Bray-Curtis similarity index to assess polychaete assemblages in the NMPA -BB slope and Magellan region respectively; SIMPER (Similarity Percentage Analyses) and ANOSIM (Analysisof Similarities) were performed. Results: A total of 918 individuals, which correspond to 39 taxa distributedin 22 families, were recorded in samples from NMPA and BB slope, mainly epibenthic or associated with thelarge corals collected. Ampharete kerguelensis McIntosh, 1885; Hyalinoecia artifex Verrill, 1880; Idanthyrsusmacropaleus (Schmarda, 1861); Laetmonice producta Grube, 1877; Onuphis pseudoiridescens Averincev, 1972;Pista mirabilis McIntosh 1885 and Terebellides malvinensis Bremec & Elias, 1999 constitute new records forBurdwood Bank. A similar polychaete assemblage characterized the three areas of NMPA and slope locations,while H. artifex characterized locations at the NW deepest slope of the bank. Conclusions: These results indicatestrong connections between the fauna collected at NMPA and the polychaetes assemblage in other Magellanareas dominated by soft bottoms. The biogeographic importance of the BB as connection for benthic polychaetespecies between South America and the Antarctic Peninsula merits future investigation.