Intertidal Gastropods (Gastropoda: Mollusca): Insights on diversity and distribution in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, India

Abstract

Marine biodiversity documentation from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) remains neglected despite the region having diversity of marine coastal habitats. The regions intertidal is one such habitat where species documentation remained heavily deficient due to lack of assessments and general apathy towards the habitat. This study addresses the issue of data deficiency of one of the largest taxa, Gastropoda through a decade long citizen science project, Marine Life of Mumbai. There exist large gaps in taxonomic research that have led to inconsistencies in species identification and inadequate ecosystem representation. This study addresses these issues by focusing on one of the largest taxa, the Molluscan class Gastropoda within the MMR. We present the spatial distribution of gastropod assemblages from 28 rocky, sandy and muddy intertidal sites within the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, on Indias west coast. A total of 163 species were recorded from 2164 observations of marine gastropods. Among these, 29 species, 34 genera and one family Limapontiidae are new records for the region. Additionally, this study reports rediscoveries of 7 species from their type locality, with 5 species of Heterobranchs recorded after 78 years: one species from Neogastropoda, Lataxiena bombayana, after 131 years and one from Siphonariida, Siphonaria bassiensis after 31 years, from their type locality. These species are herein illustrated with detailed morphological descriptions and their local distribution on 28 sites in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Through this study we elucidate that the citizen science efforts and the subsequent taxonomic analysis provide an effective and low-cost method for filling data gaps from large, understudied geographical areas.