Abstract
SUMMARY: Taxonomic composition of fish larvae was analysed from 464 plankton samples obtained during 10 oceanographic surveys in the Gulf of California between 1984 and 1988. We identified 283 taxa: 173 species, 57 genera, and 53 families. Tropical and subtropical species predominated except during the winter, when temperate-subarctic species were dominant. The most abundant species were the mesopelagic Benthosema panamense, Triphoturus mexicanus and Vinciguerria lucetia, but the coastal pelagic species Engraulis mordax, Opisthonema spp., Sardinops caeruleus and Scomber japonicus were also prominent. The taxonomic composition of the ichthyoplankton shows the seasonality of the Gulf as well as environmental changes that occurred between the 1984-1987 warm period and the 1956-1957 cool period previously reported. The presence of E. mordax larvae as one of the most abundant species in the Gulf provides evidence of the reproduction of this species two years before the development of the northern anchovy fishery and the decline of the sardine fishery in the Gulf of California.
Highlights
The Gulf of California is a semi-enclosed system bordered on the west by the Baja California peninsula and on the east by the Mexican mainland
The Gulf has one of the most diverse and highly endemic ichthyofaunas of the eastern Pacific, which supports its designation as a separate zoogeographic province from the Panamic province, in which it is usually included due to its high proportion of tropical species
Ekman (1953) first suggested that the Gulf of California ecosystem represents a distinct zoogeographic province, it was not until Briggs (1974) that it received formal status as the Cortez province, which borders to the south with the Mexican province on a line drawn between Cabo
Summary
The Gulf of California is a semi-enclosed system bordered on the west by the Baja California peninsula and on the east by the Mexican mainland To the south it connects to the Pacific Ocean through a km wide mouth (Fig. 1). The Cortez province is characterised by a relict Pleistocene temperate-subarctic fauna located north of Tiburón and Angel de la Guarda Islands that was apparently native from the San Diego province and by a tropical-subtropical fauna found primarily in the south. Both the northern and southern faunas merge in the central region, forming a zone of high spatial and temporal faunistic contrast (Castro-Aguirre et al, 1995)
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