TITLE:
The Conidae Family (Snails Producers of Poisons) Associated with the Rocky Intertidal Zone of Acapulco, Mexico
AUTHORS:
Rafael Flores-Garza, Yareni M. Garcia-Moctezuma, Pedro Flores-Rodríguez, Jesús E. Michel-Morfín, Carmina Torreblanca-Ramírez
KEYWORDS:
Conidae, Acapulco, Poison, Distribution, Rocky Intertidal Zone
JOURNAL NAME:
Natural Resources,
Vol.5 No.8,
June
19,
2014
ABSTRACT: Acapulco, Mexico has a coastline of 62 km where large areas of rocky
substrate inhabited by organisms such as the GASTROPODA Class can be found. Conidae
(Fleming, 1822) Family is among the members of this Class, which has been
poorly studied in the Mexican Pacific, despite their biomedical potential. This
research was carried out in the rocky intertidal of nine sites in Acapulco. The
objectives were: 1) Prepare an inventory of species associated with rocky
intertidal of Conidae family, 2) examine the composition of the family based on
two criteria: a) species richness and b) abundance, 3) determine the
geographical distribution and 4) analyze the size composition. The unit sampled
was 1 m2 and the sampled area was 10 m2 persite. A total
of 97 organisms were analyzed, corresponding to two subfamilies, five genera
and five species. The Puncticuliinae (Tucker & Tenorio, 2009) subfamily had
higher species richness, abundance and frequency of occurrence. The most
abundant and most common species were Harmoniconus
nux (Broderip, 1833) and Gladioconus
gladiator (Broderip, 1833) both showed regular distribution. The size
structure found for Conidae family is similar to what has been reported in
other research. For the first time G. gladiator is being reported for the state of Guerrero.