Marine Biodiversity of Costa Rica, Central America

Abstract

The squid and octopus fauna (Cephalopoda) in the waters of Costa Rica is poorly known. In this part we summarize the species\r of cephalopods known to occur along the coasts of Costa Rica. Due to the lack of distributional and presence data in Costa\r Rican waters, we do not include small oceanic squids and octopuses nor do we include new shallow-water benthic octopuses that\r have not yet been described. Our review indicates a total of 46 cephalopod species in seven families, where 26 species are\r exclusively from the Caribbean and 18 only from the Pacific; two species are common to both coasts. No cephalopod species\r are known to be endemic to Costa Rica. We recommend that future investigations of the cephalopod fauna of Costa Rica and Central\r America consider existing museum collections, apply different collecting methods, and include records of paralarval diversity\r as well as collections of females brooding eggs.