New octopus species?

Joined
Nov 22, 2004
Messages
352
Location
Ocean Springs, Mississippi
Aloha,

I've been working on these guys for about a year now and have caught 5 so far, so far it doesn't match anything found in Hawaii so far. I've had them lay eggs and had the paralarvae hatch and their chromatophore pattern doesn't match anything in my records. I'll be running genetics in the next month or so. But thought I'd post so pics to see if someone has seen something similar. I don't think it is an Abdopus. sp. The largest one I've caught was about 20g

 

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Last year we had a similar post about 2 potential new guys in Columbia (Darn, I can't find the thread). All of the little mysteries seem to be about the same size.

Very unlikely but, any chance they have a not always visible brown false eye spot? I actually hope there is no relation because I may have a female of the one I have been trying to ID for 2 years and I am hoping for a large egg species. Weight does not help a lot for most of us, how about a mantle length?
 
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I have not noticed any false eye spots. The mantle length is ~30-35 mm ML at 20g and ~6-7in arm tip to arm tip. I'm leaning towards Amphioctopus sp. which are distributed across the West Pacific but have not been found in Hawaii yet. I've had five (3males and 2 females) and the biggest on was ~20g and have had them in captivity for a while and have not grown any bigger so that seems to be about the max size. The life span seem so be ~1 year. Hopefully, I will finish the genetics next month.
 
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It's either nocturnal or crepuscular. I've found them in coral reef habitat from a depth of less than 1 foot to ~15ft. The main problem at least from a morphological point is there has been little work on classifying octopus species in the Central Pacific, most of the work has been in Aust. and Eastern Pacific. Even in Hawaii there are at least 4 species of shallow water octopuses that we know about that have yet to be classified.
 
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I think Mucktopus collected several of these on Oahu a few years back. They were nocturnal and lived in relatively shallow water. She sent a live specimen to my lab. Photo attached. I can't remember if she ran CO1 or not.

Roy
 

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That is so close to the one I have tried to ID. Monty had a definite but not always visible brown ocellus. Any shots of the webbing?



This one was not nocturnal but the female I have now seems to be.
 

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