Pharyngula

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | September 18, 2009 4:28 AM

for a second there i thought the wings were a motion-blurred propeller :-/

Posted by: Fil | September 18, 2009 4:41 AM

Lets call him Richard. That way, when we use him mince him into a steamed calamari pudding, he'll be Spotted Dick.

OK, that was pretty bad.

Me go now...

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | September 18, 2009 4:53 AM

Fil, it's not your fault. the ScienceBorg are "fixing" things again.

this is certainly more exciting than the time-out error we got last time they fixed things :-p

Posted by: Fil | September 18, 2009 5:18 AM

@ #5 Jadehawk, OM

So it would seem. In addition to having a garbled reply window in Firefox, I noticed more reply posts numbers than I could actually see. I'm back with IE8 and can magically see yours and the vicars-daughter too.

This is obvioulsy all Bill Gates fault, or maybe the Pope's.

Failing that, Floyd Rubber. ;-)

Posted by: daveau | September 18, 2009 10:42 AM

We'll call you Spot. Yay, Friday!

Posted by: welshsceptic | September 18, 2009 11:53 AM

on a slightly unrelated note, my cousin (who knows nothing of this site or pzmyers) has just come into the house and said, "hey Rich (@3 yes i am a Dick)guess what ive got...Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus" tonight is going to be shit.

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | September 18, 2009 3:50 PM

Hmm, looks like the benthic demographic has been completely overlooked by Health Canada\Santé Canada's "Sun Safety" campaign.

Posted by: Bunkie | September 18, 2009 11:07 PM

Thank you PZ. I always look forward to your Friday Cephalopod - it's not Friday without it :-)

They are beautiful!

Posted by: JohnnieCanuck | September 19, 2009 1:16 AM

#8Dave

I know it does, though I only learned it mid comment via google, after creating the mangled lyrics. Can't tell from your post if you followed my link or not. It's as if you are quoting the information available there. I found the fluorescent image there quite beautiful.

Tell us something neat about them from your memories of your thesis work, please.

Posted by: Number8Dave | September 19, 2009 8:34 PM

My thesis was mainly lab-based, going through preserved specimens and sorting out the species, so not terribly exciting. There were only three species recorded from New Zealand when I started, two of them misidentified. In the end I pushed this up to 14 species, two of them new, and three others only represented by single damaged specimens that I couldn't be sure what they were. I did get to go on a couple of collecting trips, which didn't net too many enoploteuthids but did score some fairly amazing things like live Spirula, Chiroteuthis, viperfish and big red prawns that spat out clouds of bright blue phosphorescence.

The Abraliopsis species I had the best collections for was A. gilchristi, a southern temperate species that was first described from off South Africa. A few points:

The animals seem to school in groups of similarly-sized individuals.

It didn't appear to undergo spawning migrations, as ripe and spent animals were found both on and off the continental squid. The closely related firefly squid of Japan (Watasenia scintillans) migrates inshore to spawn, when it is harvested in large numbers.

Spent females appear flaccid, and have spermatophores attached by the males around their mantle apertures. They probably die soon after completing spawning. Oddly I didn't have any spent males at all.

A ripe female can have more than 16,000 eggs. Not all ripen at the same time, and spawning appears to be an extended affair. Probably not all eggs develop completely. Ripe and spent animals were found almost year-round.

Generally, looking at stomach contents, enoploteuthids mostly seem to eat planktonic crustaceans (in this part of the world the krill species Nyctiphanes australis seemed a favourite), but also take other squid, and one Enoploteuthis galaxias specimen had fish vertebrae in its stomach.