A hot-spot of biodiversity in Northern Patagonia, Argentina

GÜLLER, MARINA; ZELAYA, DIEGO G.

BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION

SPRINGER

Año: 2017

0960-3115

Located along the Argentine coastline of northern Patagonia, are San Matías(SMG) and San Jose´ (SJG) gulfs; although they are regarded as an area with a high-priority conservational status, knowledge on their diversity is currently fragmentary. Studies on molluscs from this area have been historically centred in economic resources and few works have referred to non-commercial species. The present study aims to document the biological diversity of molluscs at the SMG/SJG area, in order to determine the significance of these two gulfs in the context of the Argentine marine fauna; to evaluate how well represented is this fauna in three protected areas; and to compare the fauna present in the protected areas with that of a non-protected area. For that purpose, molluscs coming from 132 sampling stations, ranging from the intertidal to 170 m depth, were studied, and a thorough bibliographic compilation was performed. A total of 196 species of molluscs are reported for the area. Surprisingly, almost one third of these species lacked previous records for SMG/SJG, including several new/possibly new species. The three studied protected areas contain 88.3% of the species recognised for the entire SMG/SJG area.