Completing the puzzle of Bivalves from the Gulf of Mexico: the crucial contribution of a regional repository

Over the past century, global biodiversity patterns have changed due to anthropogenic pressures and climate change. Biodiversity inventories in different regions of the world have been essential tools for understanding the distribution of organisms in detail. The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is bordered by the United States, Mexico, and Cuba and hosts multiple aquatic habitats. Bivalves, an important component of the GOM fauna, are frequently used as bioindicators in ecological studies. Here, we update the bivalve checklist of Turgeon et al. (2009) using recent literature (47 peer-reviewed papers published between 2009 and 2020), the online datasets GBIF and Invert-E-base, and records and photographs of specimens collected as part of the Mexican project Biodiversidad Marina de Yucatán (BDMY). We also describe species distributions across two biogeographical regions. We list 640 species of Bivalvia belonging to 314 genera, 75 families, and 17 orders. Our focus on the Campeche Bank yielded 168 species; 128 of those species were photographed, and 11 genera are illustrated here. Areas bordering the United States dominated bivalve diversity at all taxonomic levels, followed by those in Mexico and Cuba. The list includes 16 newly described species since 2006 for the GOM, which represents an addition of 2.5% of the reported species almost 15 years ago. In this work, we provide for the first time an illustrated catalog with 128 photographs of 20% of the 640 bivalve species in the list, which were collected at the Campeche Bank, GOM. This study expanded our understanding of bivalve diversity in the GOM and we emphasize the importance of biological collections, especially in the region, as sources of information for decision-makers, and the general public; this type of repositories can provide opportunities for collaboration and study from various interdisciplinary approaches.

Descubre más información sobre datos, investigaciones científicas, colecciones científicas y grupos de trabajo dedicados al estudio y conservación de la biodiversidad marina en https://www.bdmy.org.mx/

Discover more information about data, scientific research, scientific collections and working groups dedicated to the study and conservation of marine biodiversity at https://www.bdmy.org.mx/