ID Request - New Bees Only

DWhatley

Kraken
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Cape Coral, FL
Frick and Frack? Cheech and Chong? Yin and Yang? :sagrin:

I don't need an ID on these two but thought I would offer a place for some of our new/potential keepers to try to determine species. If you participate, put what you see that makes you decide on a species choice. There is method in my madness :bonk:. I am going to present at TONMOCON IV and have chosen hobbiest ID as my topic so I am looking for ideas on how a person new to octopuses sees the animal.

These two have not arrived yet but will be here tomorrow morning. The photos are from the supplier. Enlarging the picture by clicking on it may be helpful

Capture Location: FL Keys. Left: under a bridge, Right: top of a reef in shallow water
Mantle Size: pinky fingernail on left, quarter size on right
 

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I am getting some good ideas and will post my answer (not so much as to the species but why I would ID them this way) tomorrow. Sadly the older one did not make it through the day and I found her still in her open container when I came home with brissel worms nibbling on her arm tips. She was especially beautiful in real life and I am very sad. The tiny one disappeared on release (a good sign) and I have not located it yet. Neither ate (something I prefer to do before release). Now it is a two week waiting game on the little one.

I am delighted that there is interest in my topic. Please continue to help me with what you, as new hobbyiests/non-keepers see when you look at the photos (multiple posts welcomed).

If the response is positive to what I come up with, I will work on trying to put my outline and photos up on TONMO but I hope to see some of you in Washington!. @kpage, One day, I will play around with a database and a set of leading questions but I am still not good enough at this to attempt it (I have had the URL, octopusID.com for years with this in mind :roll:)
 
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O. briareus

Thanks for the participation! I am by no means an expert at this but keep working at getting better and my talk at TONMOCON IV will be directed at helping the hobbiest look for identifying traits.

I have found that sometimes elimination helps as much noting the positive. When available, I start with the location and list the animals we commonly see (keep in mind that there are over 300 species and there is always the chance the it won't be one of the animals we expect). The octos we see coming from FL are:
O. briareus
O. mercatoris
O. hummelincki
O. joubini (though only recently and seem more common in TX)
O. vulgaris (and only a few)

Starting with the larger animal and clearer photograph:

Negatives:
- Arm R3 gives prospective of arm to mantle ratio of about 5:1 that reduces the chance of the dwarfs and hummelincki (closer to 2.5:1)
- There is no diagnostic eye spot, again discounting hummelincki (though sometimes it is not visible, it often would be under stress)
- There is way too much webbing near the end of the arms for either dwarf or hummelincki.
- The green around the eyes is seen in young briareus (initially quite blue) but is not as noticable in the mature animal. I am not sure how common this is in young octopuses in general since Monty (unknown species but definitely not briareus) and hummelincki will show green around the eyes even as adults but it is a dull green and not flurorescent.
- The eyes are set up distinctively above the mantle, O. vulgaris eyes appear much more recessed
- The ends of the suckers are peach where they display either white or blue/purple in hummelincki and brown in O.vulgaris

Positives
- The mottled peach is a trade mark pattern/color for O. brieareus
- Not well seen even when blown up are the tiny white raised spots. O. briareus does not show much crypsis as far as height but can raise lots little white pimples all over its body, head and arms where the other larger animals raise scattered spikes or branchy appendages.
- Something not seen but worth noting is an all over body green fluorescence that often shows in a flash photo and I suspect these were taken without flash.

The photo of the smaller animal (now named Inka) shows most of the same traits and I immediately said O. briareus, however, when it arrived the arms were so spindley and the mantle so tiny I hesitated. Tonight I went through the photos I had taken of Cassy at 6 weeks and reaffirmed the call and am guessing Inka is just about this age.
 
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Kara is getting pretty good at trying to get enough in the photos for me to ID the octos :biggrin2: and I am going to try to work in the necessity of a clear photo and telling attributes even though photographing in a pet store usually does not produce clear images (and most people use cell phones).
 
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I'm glad to see the non-color identification clues - we have a ton of preserved specimens at the Smithsonian and color isn't 100% reliable in identifying an octopus anyway, even if it's an excellent tool most of the time.

(Excellently enough, my supervisor, besides being an expert in squid, is also an expert in pelagic octopuses. I saw a Tremoctopus in a jar on the table and had to ask. I might browse the stacks a little more today and see what they have in terms of their Argonautoidea. We have profuse amounts of octopuses and sepioids that I'm probably never going to get to touch because all the specimens I'm dealing with are squid. Oh. Also. I'm gonna see if I can dig out some sepioids today, since I've mostly been touching squids, and only oegopsids at that since they're the only group of decapodiforms with enough family diversity to present a challenge.)
 
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Ah that does help. That's a really cool idea D, you should definitely do that! Have like increasingly hard photos and a score so people could compete! So a reliable ID combo would be where they came from and their mantle to arm ratio?
 
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color isn't 100% reliable in identifying an octopus
From what I have seen after preserving several years of home animals, you get "brown octopuses" from all of them once they hit the formalin. Sometimes I have to really look at a specimen to determine which species it is and I don't have a huge collection (they get sent to young teuthologists in the making for school or home projects). I am definitely concentrating on non-invasive, live animal ID on very common species, I'll leave the formaline poking and sucker counting to you and Kat. Even in live animals though, color is only useful over a period of observations since most can turn white and dark brown (but I have not seen O.briareus turn dark chocolate nor photos of A. aculeatus in white) only the mottling and crypsis begins to give away ID. If I have time, I hope to show a couple of pictures that would suggest one animal but is another based upon coloration (O. briareus is not the only octo with a green fluorescent sheen).

So a reliable ID combo would be where they came from and their mantle to arm ratio
Sadly, no, but it helps to eliminate. O.mercatoris, O.joubini and O.hummelincki would fit the same ratio and locality but the fact that the arm to mantle ratio is much higher in O.briareus helps to eliminate the others in this case. There is also another caveate. Creepy was sent to me with 6 arms truncated to the webbing and the other two shortened (she was brought to my collector that way). Since she was adult I could tell the species but just using the numbers is not enough.
 
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