anticipada

This first checklist of coastal marine fish inhabiting the Department of Atlántico (Colombian Caribbean) was compiled through an exhaustive review of published information, databases, other unpublished sources, and primary data. We recorded 272 fish species, of which twenty were first reported for this region. Carangidae, Lutjanidae, and Scombridae were the richest families, which together represent 14 % of the total number of species. According to the Red List of Marine Fishes of Colombia, 37 species show some degree of threat. Most species are demersal, associated with soft bottoms. However, a significant number of species were also found associated with hard substrates, suggesting that fish congregate around these less abundant substrates, as the coastline is mainly dominated by fine sediments. This study reveals that this region has higher fish richness than previously thought and highlights the need to carry out further studies to increase the knowledge of the ichthyofauna, framed in the environmental setting of the Department's coastal zone and the anthropogenic influence on the group in question. Better knowledge of the richness of ichthyic species contributes indirectly to the improvement of current management plans for marine biodiversity conservation.


INTRODUCTION
The Department of Atlántico (DA) includes the last extension of the Magdalena River along its left flank, from the separation of the Canal del Dique to the south to its mouth at the Caribbean Sea (CRA 2016).This Department has two-thirds of its territory surrounded by the river and the sea, determining several geographic conditions including relief, structure, and water resources (Invemar 2007).Coastal lagoons, deltas, beaches, and mangrove forests are among the coastal marine ecosystems present in the department.These ecosystems provide favorable habitats for the establishment of fish communities, either resident or migratory (CRA 2016).
However, the marine coastal fish fauna in this region is understudied, only a few studies focused on fishery resource species have been found, however, these studies aim to describe species of economic interest in the area, while other isolated publications are new records (Arrieta and Muños 2003, Incoder 2004, 2006, Roa-Varón et al. 2007, Polanco et al. 2010, Caiafa et al. 2011, 2013, Anguila et al. 2016, Galvis and Díaz 2019).One of these ecological studies carried out about community structure was conducted in the Mallorquín area (Arrieta and Muños 2003) and described the fish community of a tropical coastal lagoon with estuarine characteristics; this area plays a fundamental role in the larval development phase of many the marine species of the Department (Invemar 2007).In 2004 the Colombian Institute for Rural Development (INCODER for its Spanish acronym) conducted a monitoring of the fishing activity in the DA, where a fish species list was presented.In 2006, the same institution produced a fishing characterization bulletin for the municipality of Puerto Colombia, which was used as a basis for the development of the Department's fishery management, providing information about catches during the study period (INCODER 2004(INCODER , 2006)).More recently, the Corporación Autónoma Regional del Atlántico (CRA) generated an atlas of marine-coastal flora and fauna, recording 62 fish species (CRA 2016).
Fish are the most numerous vertebrates in the world, with at least 35 768 known species, 17 762 (49.6 %) of which are found in the marine environment (Fricke et al. c2021, Webb et al. 2021).
The 17 762 valid species of marine fish are included in the Superclass Pisces, which is subdivided into four major classes.Bony fishes are found in the Class Actinopterygii, 16 503 species, sharks, and rays in the Class Elasmobranchii, 1202 species, chimaeras in the Class Holocephali, 55 species, and coelacanths in the Class Coelacanthi, two species (Webb et al. 2021).These animals have been documented for most coastal zone ecosystems and localities in the Colombian Caribbean.A list of 1329 fish species (Acero P. et al. 2023) is the current reference for inventories and taxonomic studies for the Colombian Caribbean.However, in many cases the specific locations of the records are unknown, the entire Department has not been covered, or the taxonomic, fishing, threats, conservation, and management status, especially those of commercial interest, has not been updated.
Coastal areas show remarkable biodiversity that constitutes a fundamental natural capital, forming one of the most productive systems on the planet (Invemar 2007(Invemar , 2020)).The marine biodiversity originates diverse types of ecosystem services such as support (e.g., biological production processes and energy flow), regulation (e.g.absorption of CO2 and pollutants), cultural (e.g.tourism), and provisioning services (e.g.food from fishing) (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005).
Practices such as fisheries and aquaculture directly increase people's food supply, providing highly nutritious animal protein and essential micronutrients, jobs, and income (FAO 2022).The fishes play an ecological role of great importance, fulfilling multiple ecological functions that influence ecosystem functioning, such as contributing and transporting nutrients to marine ecosystems, performing herbivory, contributing to sediment flow, controlling harmful or invasive species, as well as being indicators of water quality (Ibarra 2005, Helfman et al. 2009, Layman et al. 2013).Hence their characterization is critical because it is an excellent tool to help decisionmaking in environmental matters.
This study presents a checklist of the marine fish of the DA based on different bibliographic sources and some additional records from field observations and museum specimens.This work contributes to the knowledge of the ichthyofauna in the region and highlights the fish richness of the Department.It also provides a starting point for future verification of unusual records that do not have biological material collected and deposited in a reference collection.

Study Area
The coastal area of the DA is in the Colombian Caribbean between 0°41' and 11°6' North, and 74°47' and 75°26' West (Fig. 1).Its coastline is 72 km long (Gracia et al. 2018).This department is included in the definition of the Colombian coastal zone according to the National Environmental Policy for the Sustainable Development of Oceanic Spaces and Coastal and Insular Zones of Colombia for its acronym in Spanish-PNAOCI (Maldonado et al. 2000).The coastal-maritime zone is between the average low tide line and the outer margin of the continental shelf (200m).Although the PNAOCI policy limits the marine-coastal zone to 200m, this annotated list includes some records that exceed this bathymetric range because they are part of offshore scientific research conducted off the Department coast.

Fish Richness
The species in the list were obtained from four different sources of information: 1) An exhaustive review of published articles, bulletins, books, and gray literature was carried out using the Scopus database for published articles, Google Scholar for books and theses, and a final search in Google for fishery reports, atlases, and bulletins.
Different combinations of the following keywords were used for the search: "fish", "marine fish", "Colombian Caribbean" and "Department of Atlántico".
2) Unpublished information, such as records of deep-sea species collected by foreign vessels (RV Oregon I-II) in the 1960s and 1970s, which were obtained from a review of reference material deposited in the biological collections of the following museums: FLMNH=Florida Museum of Natural History, ANSP=Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia University and USNM=Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History.Records were also obtained from the review of material deposited inUARC= Museum of Scientific Collections, Universidad del Atlántico.
3) Review of fishery data from 2012 to 2021 stored in the Colombian Fisheries Statistical Service Information System (SEPEC) and records of species found in the Marine Biodiversity Information System (SIBM) that correspond to material stored in the fish collection of the Museum of Marine Natural History of Colombia -MAKURIWA.4) Primary information obtained from field observations performed between 2017 and 2021.
The individuals were recorded in the intertidal zone, from fishing and snorkeling activities in the localities of Puerto Velero, Caño Dulce, Puerto Caimán, and Palmarito.A photographic record of these species was obtained.The species were identified following Carpenter (2002a, b), ARAP (2011), andRobertson et al. (c2019).
These four sources were placed in two groups and four categories according to the available support: The first group is composed of CONFIRMED SPECIES, that means, species with a voucher present in a national or international collection (Category A), and species with photographic evidence (Category B); the other group is UNCONFIRMED SPECIES, that is, species that were cited in literature, but no physical or photographic records were found (Category C), and species recorded in the monthly fish landings of SEPEC (Category D).This second group, despite containing unconfirmed species, is fundamental in the construction of knowledge since it constitutes the basis for future work to confirm the identity of these species.
The checklist follows the phylogenetic classification of Nelson et al. (2016) for cartilaginous fishes and Betancur-R et al. (2017) for bony fishes.The zoological nomenclature of the species follows the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS Editorial Board c2021) and Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes (Fricke et al. c2021); the habitats of each species were consulted in Froese and Pauly (c2021) and the classification of species at risk was made following the Red Book of Marine Fishes of Colombia (Chasqui et al. 2017) which applies the categories established by the IUCN (IUCN c2021).

DISCUSSION
The species identified by the Department of Atlántico (272) represent 20 % of those recorded for the Colombian Caribbean (1329, Acero P. et al. 2023), a significant number considering its small coastline in the country.Perciformes was the dominant order, which agrees with the studies in the Colombian Caribbean on adults and juveniles by Polanco et al. (2010) and with fish larvae by Medellín-Mora et al. (2013), although the classification used for this study (Betancur-R et al. 2017) was different from that of the previously mentioned studies, as they followed the classification of Nelson (2006).This is a preliminary inventory for the DA as there are still several localities, depths, and ecosystems to be studied in detail, which could significantly increase the number of species.The demersal fish species associated with the soft bottoms of the continental shelf stand out; it is also noticeable the large number of ichthyofauna found associated with rocky bottoms or coral reefs.This is a relevant finding due to the limited presence of these ecosystems in the Department.For instance, in Puerto Velero some of the new records associated with rocky bottoms or coral communities may be due to the presence of an international marina that provides an artificial hard substrate.Records of the species Ophioblennius macclurei, Malacoctenus delalandii, Microspathodon chrysurus, Stegastes leucostictus, Chaetodon ocellatus, Halichoeres maculipinna, Aluterus scriptus, and Canthigaster rostrata were associated with the artificial hard substrates in this marina, where also fourteen species of Cnidaria were documented previously (Gracia et al. 2021).Biological monitoring in this marina is of vital importance because of the implications associated with the movement of boats and the possible arrival of non-native species or secondary invasions, which has been documented for mollusks (Gracia and Rangel-Buitrago 2020) and cnidarians (Durán-Fuentes et al. 2021).The invasive species Pterois volitans was observed in the artificial substrates at about 4 m depth in this marina and surrounding area (Fig. 2x).According to local fishermen, this species is commonly caught and consumed by the local population.
The physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of the ecosystems present in the DA are shaped in part by the continuous discharge of sediment and freshwater from the Magdalena River (Restrepo et al. 2006).Many studies demonstrate effects on the biological cycle of fish in juvenile and adult stages due to physicochemical conditions like those in the Department (Yujun et al. 2008, Yang et al. 2010, Kemp et al. 2011, Hess et al. 2015, Järvenpää et al. 2019).These effects may limit the number of species present in the marine-coastal zones of the DA but may also create a beneficial space for juveniles of different species, as increased turbidity may decrease predation rates of these stages (Newport et al. 2021).Preliminary environmental data obtained in Puerto Velero showed an average salinity of 29.3 ± 1.7 and a Horizontal Water Transparency average of 100 cm (100 ± 63.1 cm) (both bi-weekly measurements from February 2019 to February 2020) (Gracia et al. 2021).In the same location highly variable sedimentation rates were observed from July 2019 to February 2020 the mean was 39.5± 38.6 mg/cm 2 /d, but as the standard error indicates, it is quite variable.From August to early November the mean was low, 10.5 ± 7.6 mg/cm 2 /d, but increased sharply to 83.6 ± 27.9 mg/cm 2 /d from the second half of November 2019 to the end of February 2020 (Gracia et al. 2021).This suggests the need to implement physiological and developmental studies in fish species, which will allow understanding various aspects of adaptation and tolerance to these environmental conditions such as those present in this sector of the Colombian Caribbean.
Human activities such as overfishing or pollution are causing a global decline in marine biodiversity (Butchart et al. 2010, Cinner et al. 2018).Some of the listed species for the DA may be subject to this anthropogenic influence since 37 showed some degree of threat (Chasqui et al. 2017).Nine threatened species are sharks, one of the most overexploited resources and with difficult resilience due to their life strategy (Acero and Polanco 2017).Another case of these 37 species is Epinephelus itajara, which is critically endangered (Table 3) and has been documented in local newspapers as being fished around Puerto Colombia without any control (Comas c2016, Herrera c2023).
Records from published sources were mainly species of economic interest for the local population.In contrast, species that are not of economic value were obtained from mostly unpublished sources.The best-represented species in the department were Caranx hippos registered in fourteen localities, Mugil liza in twelve localities, and Megalops atlanticus in ten localities (Table S1).These three species are recognized as common resource species for local human consumption (Caiafa et al. 2011, CRA 2016, Chasqui et al. 2017, AUNAP-UNIMAGDALENA c2021).
It is important to remark that more than half (54.2 %) of the reference material information does not have a voucher in a biological collection, a worrying situation because biological collections are the references that provide basic information about the biological diversity of a particular place and time (Trujillo et al. 2014) ) and the review of samples from foreign collections (Polanco 2015).For the species G. funebris, which is listed as a new sighting for the department without photographic support, we considered it a valid record as it has been previously included within the area through approximate distribution models (Robertson et al. c2019, Polanco. et al. 2020).
Despite general assumptions that the fauna of the coastal waters is fairly known, most of them are unconfirmed records and lack reference collections to back them.Despite the uncertainty, all unconfirmed records here were incorporated because they are included in previous regional studies based on approximate species distribution models (Robertson et al. c2019, Polanco 2020), that include the continental coastal area of the Colombian Caribbean.This study highlights the need for increased research efforts in the future within the scientific community.
This study is a baseline of species that have been documented as inhabitants of this sector of the Colombian Caribbean.It also reveals the scarce knowledge about this group of organisms in the area, which is an important part of the economy of the fishers and inhabitants.It is recommended to encourage and support the strengthening of local biological collections of coastal-marine fish, as well as population studies, especially for those species with some type of threat at the national level, to establish their status at the local level.S1).The underlined localities correspond to the sampling sites where field observations were carried out.

1 Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Delimitation of the coastal marine zone of the Department of Atlántico (Colombian

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Photographic records of some species observed between 2017 and 2021 in different

Table 2 .
Chasqui et al. (2017)ecorded in the Department of Atlántico included in the Colombian fish red list according toChasqui et al. (2017).