Cortés Jorge
Centro de Investigación en Ciencias del Mar y Limnología (CIMAR), Universidad de Costa Rica, San Pedro, 11501 San José, Costa Rica; Escuela de Biología, Universidad de Costa Rica.
Zookeys. 2017 Feb 6(652):129-179. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.652.10427. eCollection 2017.
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.
与全球陆地生物群相比，热带海洋生物的多样性尚未得到如此深入的研究。此外，热带地区的海洋生物多样性研究也落后于其他地区。位于哥斯达黎加北太平洋海岸的瓜纳卡斯特保护区海洋部门（ACG，瓜纳卡斯特保护区的海洋部门）占地43000公顷，也不例外。四十多年来，一直在持续研究该地区的陆地动植物。20世纪30年代，有探险队途经该地区对ACG的海洋生物多样性进行了研究，但直到20世纪90年代，除了海龟外，研究并不多。20世纪90年代中期，哥斯达黎加大学（UCR）的海洋科学与湖沼学研究中心（CIMAR）开始对ACG的海洋环境和生物进行探索。2015年，ACG与CIMAR合作启动了BioMar项目，其目标是对ACG海洋部门的物种进行编目（BioMar ACG项目）。作为基线，我在此汇总了已发表的ACG海洋物种记录，发现已报告了594种海洋物种，占哥斯达黎加太平洋海岸已知物种的15.5%。种类最多的类群是甲壳类、软体动物和刺胞动物，占ACG物种的71.7%。与哥斯达黎加海岸其他地区相比，ACG中的一些分类群，如红树林和鱼类寄生虫，有很好的代表性，但其他一些分类群似乎代表性严重不足，例如红藻、多毛类、桡足类、棘皮动物以及海洋鱼类和鸟类，这可能是由于采样偏差所致。有30个物种最初是根据来自ACG的标本描述的，还有89个物种除了ACG外，在哥斯达黎加太平洋海岸的其他地方都不为人所知。大多数采样集中在海洋部门、布兰卡海滩和穆尔西埃拉戈岛的一些地点，以及圣埃琳娜湾附近海域。为了填补这一空白，CIMAR正在与ACG和一个私人基金会合作，开始对该保护区的海洋生物进行编目。该项目将得到两名海洋准分类学家的协助，所有样本都将进行编目、拍照、条形码标记，并将凭证标本存放在UCR的动物博物馆。所有信息都将通过互联网提供。预计BioMar项目将填补许多知识空白，并且会发现更多的海洋物种。该项目可能会成为哥斯达黎加其他保护区（Áreas de Conservación）以及其他国家海洋生物多样性编目的可行模式。
