What species of cuttlefish and octopus exist along the east coast of Australia?
Also what are your preffered methods of capture and how do you go about finding out where they are? (net info is limited!!)
thanks very much,
sam
Steve O'Shea
Apr 29, '04, 2:34am
Sorry it took so long to respond to this question.
The reference to one of your questions, the eastern Sepia species of Australia, is taken from:
Lu, C.C. (1998) Order Sepioidea, pp 504-514 in Besley, P.L.; Ross, G.J.B.; Wells, A. (Eds) Mollusca: The Southern Synthesis. Fauna of Australia. Vol. 5. CSIRO Publishing: Melbourne, Part Axvi 563 pp.
Lu actually refers to the following (for the entire Australian region). I'll let you figure out what you can expect to find in any particular region.
Northern Australian region: Sepia cottoni, S. elliptica, S. latimanus, S. opipara, S. papuensis, S. pharaonis, S. smithi, Metasepia pfefferi, and Sepiella weberi.
Southern Australian region: Sepia apama, S. braggi, S. chirotrema, S. cultrata, S. dannevigi, S. hedleyi, S. novaehollandiae, and S. rex.
Eastern Overlap Zone: Sepia mestus, S. plangon (extends to Gulf of Carpentaria), S. rozella, S. whitleyana (extends to Gulf of Carpentaria), S. baxteri, and S. mira.
And finally, the Western Overlap Zone: Sepia irvingi, S. vercoi, and S. reesi.
Regarding the octopus fauna of Australia .... well, there are so many reports out there of numerous new species that it is difficult to know. We'll just have to wait for a monographic review of the fauna.
Cheers
Steve
wow! :o
That was extremely helpfull!!! I have never heard of most of those species!!! I was only aware of s. mestus!! :?
Thanks again - great help!!! :P
sam
joel_ang
Apr 29, '04, 9:00am
Or, you could check Cephbase (.com) 's biogeography page, it gives a list of the ceph species recorded in the are /country that you've selected.
thanks, i already checked the biogeography page but there is lots of information missing and the distribution maps are not complete for most species - it was helpful though!!
thanks anyway