Abstract

Cephalopods are increasingly acknowledged as an ecologically important group in Chilean ecosystems, but are also one of their less-known biogeographic components. Notably, this group is represented virtually exclusively by non-endemic species, although we hypothesized that their distribution over the coast should be constrained by similar physical determinants to those affecting endemic taxa. We thus present a first evaluation of the latitudinal patterns of diversity and distribution of cephalopod species in Chile, based on geographical data obtained from a review of the available literature. We constructed presence-absence binary matrices of coastal and oceanic species in 20 latitudinal units (2°), for then calculating the respective similarity matrices to obtain a distribution dendrogram using hierarchical cluster analysis (UPGM). The original binary matrices were resampled performing 1000 stochastic reassignments to calculating the 95th percentile as the criterion to identify significant clusters. Statistical comparisons between distributional groupings were performed using ANOSIM. We recorded 86 cephalopods in Chile, including oceanic (71) and coastal (15) species. Species richness showed two major breaks at 30° S and 42° S, and decreased toward higher latitudes. Cephalopod species showed well-defined endpoints of distribution within the Chilean coast, differentiating three main biogeographical units: northern (18-30° S), central (30-42° S) and southern (42-56° S) areas. Biogeographical patterns of cephalopod species in Chile showed no particular difference with those already described for most Chilean taxa. The marked distribution breaks of cephalopods at 30° and 42° S suggest that external forcing and physical factors other than temperature gradients may strongly constrain their dispersal.