New Paper Doubles Bivalve Fauna Of Juan Fernandez And Desventuradas Islands

These lie far off the Chilean coast in the Pacific and count among the least studied island groups. Juan Fernandez served as a rare provision stop in the eastern Pacific during the era of sailing vessels. The earliest description of a bivalve species stems from such a stopover by Darwin’s Beagle. The Desventuradas Islands, about 750 km to the north, are even more remote and have neither a harbor nor permanent inhabitants. During the 1997 trip, Rüdiger recognized that most of the species appeared new to science but held back with formal descriptions because too little was known about the diversity of the Chilean and Peruvian mainland coast. That changed when two Argentine colleagues, Diego Zelaya and Marina Güller (both of Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas [CONICET], and Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina), studied and published on the coastal fauna. Rüdiger invited them to the Museum in 2019 with support from the Science and Scholarship Funding Committee, and in due course the trio added specimens from the few prior expeditions to the region. They then developed a regional monograph, which is just out in PeerJ, and ended up doubling the known bivalve fauna of these island groups. The team identified a total of 48 species, including 19 new species, and six others that might be new. The paper has wonderful photos for those that like to see sea shells from the sea shore. Says Rüdiger, “one of the most interesting outcomes is that the bivalve fauna is largely endemic to these islands, which supports the consideration of this region as its own faunal province and its need for ongoing protection.”
July 12. 2024