Resumen del producto

The Gulf of California Program of the World Wildlife Fund-Mexico has assigned a high level of conservation priority (80%) to Isla Santa Catalina because of anthropogenic threats. This situation makes it necessary to create an inventory and ecological assessment that would ensure that future actions taken for the island will be positive actions in the management of its coastal zone. Thus we studied the composition and structure of the soft-bottom mollusc community of the island as an index of environmental quality. We selected 16 sampling sites on five pocket beaches, where we collected 32 sediment samples by scuba diving. We used temperature, chlorophyll a (Sea WIFS), and grain size sediment as environmental indicators. We analyzed the abundance and diversity of the benthic malacological community as ecologic descriptors. We found 65 mollusk species, 33 taxa of Bivalvia class and 32 Gastropoda. The most common family in the zone was Siphonariidae; the most abundant species was Siphonaria maura (22% of abundance), followed by Crepidula aculeata (9%). The bivalve Septifer zeteki was the most widely distributed species on the sampling sites. The greatest specific richness was found in shallow bottoms of coarse sands between depths of 2 to 30 m. The average values of the diversity index obtained for the zone (2bits/indv) were higher compared with other sites from different latitudes of the eastern coast of the Gulf of California.

Palabras clave: Biomasa; mollusks; Santa Catalina Island

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