Bathymetric patterns of polychaete (Annelida) species richness in the continental shelf of the Gulf of California, Eastern Pacific

Abstract

The mid-domain effect was tested to evaluate the bathymetric patterns of the polychaete species richness in the Upper and Lower Gulf of California as a possible hypothesis to explain the species richness gradient, exploring the overlapping of species depth ranges towards the middle continental shelf. The bathymetric gradient of the number of species was estimated with the depth ranges of 554 polychaete species, and the mid-domain effect was tested using a Monte Carlo simulation program at bands of 10m depth. The Upper (251 species) and Lower (491 species) Gulf regions showed clear differences in their faunal composition (Jaccard similarity index=0.34); the species richness pattern was characterized by a highly significant presence of polychaetes with short depth ranges (<10m). The richness distribution could be described as a cubic polynomial curve, but the maximum values in both Gulf regions (141 and 317 species, respectively for Upper and Lower Gulf regions) are strongly biased to shallow waters (40m). This is not consistent with the peak of diversity at 60–70m predicted by the model. The observed patterns cannot be reproduced by the mid-domain effect, suggesting the existence of non-random factors affecting the species richness gradients in the Gulf.