The shelled gastropods of the Solitary Islands Marine Park, northern New South Wales, Australia

ABSTRACT

Away from the major population centres, the biodiversity of Australia's shallow coastal marine waters is poorly known. The Tweed-Moreton Bioregion, covering northern New South Wales and south-east Queensland, is both a focus of marine conservation (with three marine parks), and research efforts to predict the effects of climate change through species range extensions and shifts in community composition. Here we provide the first comprehensive list of shallow-water (<30 m) shelled, gastropod macro-molluscs (>5 mm) from the Solitary Islands Marine Park, compiled from a range of sources, including field collections over a 30-year period to 2017. The Cypraeidae (50 spp.), Muricidae (47 spp.) and Conidae (32 spp.) were the most speciose families, accounting for 26% of the total inventory of 500 species from 77 families. A total of 143 species are recorded at their southern limit of distribution on Australia's east coast, most being rare, tropically affiliated taxa found at offshore island sites that receive more frequent contact with the southward-flowing East Australian Current. The inventory confirms the high biodiversity of the Solitary Islands region and the importance of ongoing conservation management.

KEYWORDS:

• Benthic
• subtropical
• East Australian Current
• southern distributional limit
• Tweed-Moreton bioregion

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to Des Beechey, Ian Loch, Winston Ponder (all from the Australian Museum), Richard Willan (Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory), and David Tarrant for the their assistance in confirming the identity of many of the species listed here. Distributional data held by the Australian Museum were made available under a Data Licence Agreement. Additional collecting for the project was conducted under various permits from NSW Department of Primary Industries and the NSW Marine Parks Authority. We would also like to thank the following people for contributing species to the list through a range of research and recreational diving and rocky shore activities – Matt Harrison, Ian and Kate Shaw, Bob Edgar, Nicola Fraser, Jaqueline Thorner – and for making their private collections available for examination – especially Barbara Knox, David Tarrant and Ray and Helen Phipps. Kathryn James prepared Figure 1. We extend our thanks to Dr Rachel Przeslawski, Dr Don Colgan and an anonymous reviewer whose comments helped improve the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author contributions

SDAS collected and compiled the data, LP checked and updated the nomenclature, SDAS wrote the text.