Análisis del registro fósil de peces arrecifales de Isla Saboga, Pacífico Panameño

Tesis para optar por el título de Licenciatura en Biología Marina. Universidad Marítima Internacional de Panamá, Facultad de Ciencias del Mar Escuela de Recursos Marinos y Ambientales.

ABSTRACT
There is currently a lack of information on the history of the majority of marine environments and this limits the ability to establish baselines for fisheries, environmental impacts, and conservation objectives. Survey and fishery catch data show significant declines in fish populations around the world over the last few decades, but to understand the status, trends of fishes and their ecosystems before monitoring began we use historical assessments using time series of thousands of years and prehistoric records. To have a better idea of how fish populations have behaved over time in a given ecosystem can be obtained. In this way, inferences can be made about the state of such populations during pristine ecosystem conditions, as well as determining possible affectations to natural communities due to human intervention. The fossil record is a tool that allows us to reconstruct baselines of communities in a more precise manner. In the case of fish, the otoliths that are part of the fossil record allow determining several ecological aspects of the individual such as age and growths, as well as taxonomic identification. The objective of this study is to evaluate the quality of the fossil record by means of taphonomy to clarify the information provided by otoliths of reef fish communities through time, incorporating paleoenvironmental data and anthropogenic impacts. The present study was carried out in Saboga Island, Las Perlas archipelago, Panama, being the first study of this type using fossil remains. The otoliths examined were extracted from the seafloor by means of 3-4 m long sedimentary cores, from which a record of the last 6,000 years or so of the marine substrate is obtained. This technique allows us to cover several natural and anthropogenic events through time, such as climatic changes, occupation, and human expansion in the islands, which could have affected the reef accretion, and consequently the fish communities associated with it.