Checklists of Crustacea Decapoda from the Canary and Cape Verde Islands, with an assessment of Macaronesian and Cape Verde biogeographic marine ecoregions

Abstract

The complete list of Canarian marine decapods (last update by Gonzalez & Quiles 2003, popular book) currently comprises 374 species/subspecies, grouped in 198 genera and 82 families; whereas the Cape Verdean marine decapods (now fully listed for the first time) are represented by 343 species/subspecies with 201 genera and 80 families. Due to changing environmental conditions, in the last decades many subtropical/tropical taxa have reached the coasts of the Canary Islands. Comparing the carcinofaunal composition and their biogeographic components between the Canary and Cape Verde archipelagos would aid in: validating the appropriateness in separating both archipelagos into different ecoregions (Spalding et al. 2007), and understanding faunal movements between areas of benthic habitat. The consistency of both ecoregions is here compared and validated by assembling their decapod crustacean checklists, analysing their taxa composition, gathering their bathymetric data, and comparing their biogeographic patterns. Four main evidences (i.e. different taxa; divergent taxa composition; different composition of biogeographic patterns; different endemicity rates) support that separation, especially in coastal benthic decapods; and these parametres combined would be used as a valuable tool at comparing biotas from oceanic archipelagos. To understand/predict south-north faunal movements in a scenario of regional tropicalization, special attention is paid to species having at the Canaries their southernmost occurrence, and also to tropical African warm-affinity species.