Echinoderms of Colombia

Abstract

Colombia is recognized as a megadiverse country based primarily on terrestrial biodiversity. However, it has a coastline on the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, home to many marine ecosystems, which in many cases have not been investigated. As expected, the Caribbean and Pacific coasts of Colombia exhibit different geological, oceanographic, climatic, and social characteristics. This in turn gives rise to major differences in their biota, as well as the development of marine research on each coast. For this reason, this chapter separates the information for the Caribbean and the Colombian Pacific. It uses the ecological sectors of each coast proposed by INVEMAR in 2000. There are 388 species of echinoderms known from Colombia, 264 are in the Colombian Caribbean (22 crinoids, 67 asteroids, 80 ophiuroids, 51 echinoids, 44 holothurians) and 124 are in the Colombian Pacific (34 asteroids, 30 ophiuroids, 28 echinoids and 32 holothurians). For the Colombian Caribbean Sea, although there are information about echinoderms from intertidal and shallow water ecosystems such as rocky shores, coral reefs, sandy beaches, mangrove areas, seagrass beds, and soft bottoms, currently the most complete information is from deep sea ecosystems; specifically from soft bottoms and deep azooxanthellate coral communities, where echinoderms appear to be one of the most diverse and abundant megafaunal group together with cnidarians, mollusks, crustaceans and fishes. For Pacific echinoderms only, shallow ecosystems are described, including cliffs and rocky shores, coral reefs, sandy beaches, mangrove areas, and submerged rocky and sandy substrates. Rocky shores and coral reefs are the richest in species. In general, research in Colombia has focused on taxonomy and some ecological aspects. It is necessary to continue with these kinds of studies and to delve into issues such as structure of assemblages of species distribution, population densities, and relate them to environmental and oceanographic conditions in the area. All this information is important as a baseline for decisions on conservation in the current context of growing interest in oil exploration in the seabed and coastal development. With regard to fisheries and conservation, unlike the Colombian Pacific where no information is available, in the Caribbean Sea there are fishery records of some species of sea cucumbers. It is necessary to begin the study population dynamics and reproductive cycles of these fishery species. Some species, such as Ophiothrix synoecina, Diadema antillarum and Oreaster reticulatus, have been included in conservation initiatives such as the red book of marine invertebrates of Colombia. There are many issues about Colombian echinoderms to investigate, especially for the Colombian Pacific, about which knowledge is still very incomplete compared to the Colombian Caribbean. Thus it is important to continue with the study of both basic and applied issues and to start taking advantage of new tools such as molecular techniques to investigate cryptic speciation, population connectivity, species adaptation and conservation biology, considering that Colombia is a country with a privileged location to answer questions about the evolution of species in the Americas and has many resources to conserve and use sustainably.