Marine invertebrate biodiversity from the Argentine Sea, South Western Atlantic

Abstract

The list of marine invertebrate biodiversity living in the southern tip of South America is compiled. In particular, the living invertebrate organisms, reported in the literature for the Argentine Sea, were checked and summarized covering more than 8,000 km of coastline and marine platform. After an exhaustive literature review, the available information of two centuries of scientific contributions is summarized. Thus, almost 3,100 valid species are currently recognized as living in the Argentine Sea. Part of this dataset was uploaded to the OBIS database, as a product of the Census of Marine Life-NaGISA project. A list of 3,064 valid species, grouped into 1,662 genera distributed in 808 families and 23 phyla, was assessed. The best represented taxa were Arthropoda and Mollusca, contributing approximately with the 50% of the mentioned species in the literature. Cumulative species curves were analyzed in order to estimate the percentage of marine invertebrate biodiversity that is currently known. However, no model fit to our data, showing that the recorded species represent less than 50% of the expected marine invertebrate biodiversity for the Argentine Sea. The great surface of the Argentine Marine Platform (6,581,500 km2) and the relative low effort in collecting and studying new species due to economical restrictions could explain the low fraction of described species. The training of new taxonomists, as well as, the support of projects that contribute to the knowledge of marine invertebrate biodiversity from South Western Atlantic is recommended.