Thirty-seven species of siphonophores are listed for the Costa Rican coastal and oceanic waters. All species were recorded from the Pacific coast, seven of them have been also collected off the Caribbean coast. These figures represent 10% of the 70 species known from the Caribbean Sea, and 42% of the 87 species known from the eastern tropical Pacific. Overall, the species recorded in Costa Rican waters represent close to 37% of the nearly 100 species known to be distributed in the tropical-equatorial belt. The relatively low biodiversity of siphonophores in the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica is clearly a result of the scarcity of research in this region. All the species currently known from Costa Rica are epipelagic forms living between the surface and 200 m, and have been recorded previously in the corresponding oceanographic regions of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Additional work in both oceanic and coastal waters is necessary, including coastal and estua-rine ecosystems and also deep waters (>200 m), which most probably harbor a diverse siphonophore fauna.
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Rodríguez-Sáenz, K., Gasca, R. (2009). Siphonophores. In: Wehrtmann, I.S., Cortés, J. (eds) Marine Biodiversity of Costa Rica, Central America. Monographiae Biologicae, vol 86. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8278-8_11
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