Diversity of benthic diatoms in the Guerrero Negro Lagoon (El Vizcaíno Biosfere Reserve), Baja California Peninsula, Mexico

Abstract

High species diversity renders benthic diatoms that are useful in assessing environmental impact, as well as an adequate reference for measuring biodiversity in protected areas. Preliminary observations suggested that the Guerrero Negro Lagoon (LGN), located in the Baja California Peninsula, Mexico, is an area with a high diversity of benthic diatoms comprising numerous species of certain genera, orders, class, etcetera, which were not equally diverse or common in other areas, and could thus yield new records for the region. Thus, samples of subtidal sediments from LGN were collected in order to analyze the species composition of epipelic diatoms by means of optical microscopy. The taxonomic study yielded a list with 232 taxa, which comprised 42 centric diatoms (>18%) and 190 pennates from 74 genera; 14 new records for the Mexican Pacific are included. This supported the hypothesis that epipelic diatoms from the LGN subtidal constitute assemblages with a high species richness and numerous taxa characteristic of subtropical regions.