The Conidae Family (Snails Producers of Poisons) Associated with the Rocky Intertidal Zone of Acapulco, Mexico

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 m 2 and the sampled area was 10 m 2 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.