Previously, only one species of leptostracan had been recorded from Mexico. Nebalia lagartensis Escobar & Villalobos-Hiriart, 1995, was described from specimens collected from the Gulf of Mexico. No material had been described from the remaining stretches of Mexico's coastline. At the onset of our project, we were able to locate only two unpublished collections from the Baja peninsula, specimens collected from Ensenada (Baja California)and Bahia Magdalena (Baja California Sur). We have since performed extensive surveys of the littoral zone along the eastern (gulf) and western coasts of Baja California; we discovered intertidal populations of leptostracans at 18 localities.
In January, 2000, we spent two weeks studying in Baja California Sur, where we found more than a dozen populations of Nebalia in the intertidal zone alone. In May, 2000, we traveled to specific sites in the northern state of Baja California to survey both the Pacific and Gulf of California coastlines for leptostracans; we found leptostracans in several other localities in the northern state, primarily along the Pacific Coast.
These two initial trips were funded largely by a grant from UCLA's Latin American Center. The on-going research on these collections from Mexico involves collaboration with Ernesto Campos from the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California (Ensenada) and Michel Hendrickx of the Instituto de Ciencias del Mar y Limnologia (Mazatlán). The work is funded primarily by a Dissertation Improvement Grant awarded to Todd Haney by the UC Mexus program.
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