Science Friday - The Octopus Overlooked By Science | Squid With ‘Giant’ Eggs Could Be New Species

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

The larger Pacific striped octopus is unusually social. But it wasn’t recognized by scientists until 2015, despite one man’s efforts. And, a deep-sea squid in the family Gonatidae was filmed cradling large eggs for its body size, which suggests it’s an entirely new species.Why It Took Decades For This Octopus To Be RecognizedOctopus mating behaviors can be quite deadly. Many species are cannibalistic, making the entire prospect of mating dangerous, and female octopuses often die after laying one clutch of eggs. Their cannibalistic tendencies mean that octopuses don’t socialize as much as other animals.But the larger Pacific striped octopus (LPSO) is different. For one, they live together in colonies. And mating is not only a safer proposition, it involves beak-to-beak “kissing.” Plus, females can lay eggs repeatedly, even tending to embryos at various stages of development.But because these behaviors are so uncharacteristic of most octopuses, the scientific community didn’t officially recognize their existence until 2015, despite the decades-long effort of a Panamanian diver and artist named Arcadio Rodaniche. When he tried to share his findings about the LPSO at a symposium and publish them in a journal, he was flatly rejected. But his persistent research and documentation of the species would eventually be validated when researchers were able to obtain and observe the octopuses in captivity.SciFri producer Kathleen Davis sits down with freelance science writer Kenna Hughes-Castleberry to talk about an article she reported for Science Friday about the late Rodaniche and his yearslong effort to get official scientific recognition for the LPSO.Read the story at sciencefriday.com.Squid With ‘Giant’ Eggs Could Be A New SpeciesTo finish up our celebration of Cephalopod Week we wanted to share a bit of squid news. A group of researchers recently identified a potentially new squid species in the family Gonatidae. Scientists took a closer look at some video footage captured back in 2015 and found a deep-water squid that was cradling some rather large eggs, which was not in line with other squid of the same family.John Dankosky talks with Dr. Bruce Robison, midwater ecologist and senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, about this new discovery.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Wake up, new squid species just dropped. What's most remarkable about it is the size of the eggs that this mother squid was carrying in her arms. It's Thursday, June 27th, and you're listening to Science Friday. I'm SciFri producer Shoshana Bucksbell. We're concluding our celebration of Cephalopod Week with two stories, both about new discoveries in the cephalopod family. This first one takes place over 30 years. years ago. The large Pacific striped octopus, the LPSO for short, is an incredibly social animal.

They live in pairs, mate by kissing beak to beak, and even take care of several eggs they lay. But these traits aren't normal for octopuses. And for a while, scientists didn't even think this type of octopus even existed. But one person did, Arcario Rodaniche, a diver and artist who lived in Panama. Here's sci-fri producer Kathleen Davis with more. Here to tell us about Arcadio's work and his fight for the LPSO's recognition is Kenna Hughes-Castleberry, freelance writer and science communicator at Jilla at the University of Colorado Boulder, who recently wrote an article for ScienceFriiday.com about the unique Octopus's story.

Kenna, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much, Kathleen, for having me on. So before we get into this, can you tell us about what? makes this octopus unique? Absolutely. So most octopuses are known as being solitary creatures. They live in dens by themselves. They only interact when they mate. And even then when they mate, they often mate at a distance. So usually the male may fling an arm full of sperm at a female. Very romantic. Absolutely. Or sometimes they stretch an arm that has the sperm packet. at the female, you know, again, from that safe distance because cannibalism and maiming has

happened before. So with these octopuses, they're super different from that, right? Because, as you mentioned, they're social and they mate in pairs and they live together. So this kind of goes against the norm for most octopuses. It sounds like there's a lot to love about this octopus. What is your favorite thing about it? Oh, gosh. That's such a good question. It's really difficult to say. I think for me, I just love the fact that these octopuses have a really unique personality. So not only do they, you know, mate in pairs, they live together, they live in community, but they also have a really silly hunting strategy, which became popular in 2016 when these octopuses were first kind of announced to the public, where they reach a tentacle across a shrimp's back to the other side of the shrimp and push it into their mouths. So it's kind of like, if you have a friend and you, like, touch their shoulder on the opposite side and they look the other way, it's kind of like that. So it's quite silly, but it actually works very well for them. Wow. Okay. So how did you get into the story about the history of the LPSO?

Yeah. So I was visiting Mbari, which is the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute for a separate article I was writing for the debrief on how octopuses have individual personalities when solving puzzles. and I met with Dr. Christine Hufford there for the interview, and I saw her photo of the drawing that Arcadia Rodney-Jech had made of the LPSO behind her on her desk. And my photographer, Julia, at the time, asked her about the drawing. And she got into the story about Arcadio and his work and the octopuses, and I had to learn more. I thought, why has nobody told me this story before? Why is that not more public? You know, so then I just started digging.

And what was Arcadio's story? Yeah, so Arcadio's story is one where I hope more people learn about it. But he is a Panamanian diver and artist. He has a degree in electrical engineering. And so when you read about his story, you don't get the sense that he doesn't have like an academic background in Sepsopod research. Most of the articles that we have about him mentioned him. mentioned him in only one paragraph, and they only say that he's an octopus researcher. So most people think he had like a PhD and whatnot, and he didn't. He was just a really passionate diver and found a colony of these octopuses with a very famous sepulapod researcher named Martin Moynihan in the 70s. And he thought, this is so strange and so odd the fact that these octopuses live together and they do all sorts of weird behaviors, I have to learn more. And so he actually, was able to capture some of these specimens and keep them in labs at the Smithsonian Tropical

Research Institute in Nouse off of Panama City, Panama, and studied them and saw more of these behaviors and tried to write up everything. And he presented his findings at the 1990 Woods Hole Symposium in Massachusetts. And no one believed him because the octopuses were so weird. He didn't really have any pictures. Like, we don't have any photos of these octopuses for a long time until 2016. And so he just had mainly his drawings that he showed. And then also, again, he wasn't like a research academic. So people didn't really see him as being like a source of expertise. And so they just kind of laughed him out of the conference. And he was really disgruntled and dejected. And so he still wanted to try to make a stand, though, for these octopuses and get them

classified. And so he wrote up. everything in a paper and he tried to publish it and it was really severely rejected. There's only one copy of this paper in existence and I have not seen it, but it has all of the reviewers' comments on it. And from what I know, they're pretty bad. And so he didn't go into research after that. He just kind of retired and worked on rebuilding a submarine and worked on his art. And then in 2016, a team of researchers at UC Berkeley headed by Roy Caldwell, who had actually seen Arcadio do the initial studies with the LPSOs back in the 80s, reached out and said,

we were able to get live specimens of your octopus. Wow. We see that they are doing everything you originally said. Could you be an author on this paper with us? Wow. Yeah, they were able to validate it. So one of the scientists that you spoke to said that it was a shame to the scientific community that his research wasn't recognized for 30 years. I mean, that seems like a pretty

important statement to make. What do you make of that? Yeah, I think it's one where it's a really good example of showing that there is elitism in science, unfortunately, and that even if you have a really good idea, sometimes if you just don't have the degrees, you can't push forward, no matter how hard you try or no matter how much evidence you have. I think thankfully the cephalopod community seems to be opening more doors to citizen scientists like Arcadio, especially in the case of finding new species or exploring areas that just aren't accessible. This is because most research academics in this field don't live in areas where octopuses naturally are, or they might only visit for a few weeks at a time to do field work.

And so if they can pair with citizen scientists like local fishermen, divers, underwater photographers, they can be able to track these animals more thoroughly, understand how they survive in the wild. So at least with the LPSOs, we actually have never seen them in the wild. We don't know what they're lucky in wild. All of the experiments we have are only with home aquaria or in tanks. And so it would be very interesting, at least in this case, to try to pair with people down in Panama to see what actually is going on. So why is it that the large Pacific striped octopus was so hard to find?

I mean, what makes it so elusive? Yeah, that's a really good question. So I think one thing is a lack of information, right? We only have Arcadia's paper and really the 2016 paper that Caldwell and his team did that validated Arcadia's findings on this animal. Those are kind of the only two pieces of scientific literature out there right now. And it's really a lack of going down and seeing these animals in the wild. That would give us a lot more data and a lot more information.

But as the researchers will also tell you, there's also been a lack of live samples. So it's been hard for people these days to actually obtain these animals and study them even further. The only reason Caldwell and his team were able to is because one of the live animal traders was able to obtain some samples from local fishermen and said, hey, I have this weird octopus that you keep asking about. I was finally able to get it. And so hopefully, you know, in the future, if people get grants or if they're able to obtain more samples, we'll be able to find more out about these animals. What is the state of research right now on the LPSO? Yeah.

So it's kind of stalled a little bit, again, due to like lack of funding, lack of just information. But there is a team headed by Gold Dolan at UC Berkeley that is trying to actually. genetically name this species. And by genetically name, I mean like genetically analyze and then give it a scientific name. So the large Pacific striped octopus does not have a scientific name. It's only known as the LPSO, which is his common name. It has a cousin known as the lesser Pacific striped octopus, also LPSO, but its scientific name is octopus churchy. And so Dolan's team is currently genetically analyzing octopus churchy eye because it would make for a good model organism for research, right? It, like the LPSO cousin produces multiple clutches of eggs. It's pretty small. It's easy to maintain. It'd just be a

good model organism for research. But once they do that, they'd like to analyze the larger Pacific striped octopus to see if it's genetically distinct enough. And if it is, give it a scientific name. And according to Dolan, she'd like to name it after Arcadia Ranichie. That's really special. So after you've spent all this time, no pun intended, diving into the story of the Large Pacific Striped Octopus, what are your own takeaways? Yeah, I think it's one for me where, again, I'm still kind of surprised that nobody has covered this story before. It's just such a underdog story and it's such a comeback story. And it's really a good kind of showcase for citizen science, for perseverance and for scientific dedication. It's also one where I think it just breaks the norm in so many ways about what we already know about octopuses and the fact that there are other species out there that could be really social and really critical for just learning more about animal behavior.

And so I really hope more people kind of get inspired by his story and pursue this further. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to tell us all about it. Thank you so much, Kathleen. Kenna Hughes-Castleberry freelance writer. You can read her article about the LPSO at Science Friday.com. slash octopus. To finish up our celebration of Cephalopod Week, we wanted to share a bit of breaking squid news. A group of researchers recently identified a new squid species in the family gonadity.

Scientists took a closer look at some video footage captured back in 2015, and they found a deep water squid who was cradling some rather large eggs, not in line with other squid of the same species. So joining me now to tell us more about this. Squid Discovery is my guest. Dr. Bruce Robeson is Midwater Ecologist and Senior Scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute based in Moss Landing, California. Dr. Robeson, welcome to Science Friday. Thanks very much. Good day to you. Well, first of all, to start off, describe what this species of squid looks like for the listeners at home.

Well, it's an ordinary looking squid, kind of reddish brown in color with eight arms. and a big eye because it lives in deep water and needs to collect a lot of light down there in the dark. What's most remarkable about it is the size of the eggs that this mother squid was carrying in her arms. So how big are these eggs? Oh, I suppose it must be close to just under half an inch, I'd say. Okay, so under half an inch, I have no idea how big a normal squid egg is supposed to be. So why is this so different? A normal squid egg is about half that size or less, down to an eighth of an inch.

So these are monster eggs in our experience anyway. Where exactly on the map did you find a squid? We were in the Gulf of California, Mexico. That's that long arm of water that stretches up between the Baja Peninsula and the Mexican mainland. So let's get back to these giant eggs, these monster eggs you are talking about. So explain a little bit more about why it is that seeing eggs this size told you this is a different type of squid altogether. In part, it's because the size was so different than what we typically see. But also the proportions of the squid's body and the placement of suckers on its arms and the arrangement of hooks on the arms that it uses to grasp things with.

all of those aspects told us that this was indeed something we had not seen before. It's a familiar face, but not exactly what we're accustomed to seeing. So it sort of looks like the squid you've seen, but there's some unusual things about it. What's one of the significant things about these eggs being so large? I'm going to guess that a larger egg takes longer to grow to that size. Indeed, that's the case. And particularly at these great depths where the water is much colder, that slows down the development process as well. So these eggs will be developing for a long time.

We estimate, oh, maybe a year and a half, whereas typical shallow water squids will have their eggs develop in two to three months. A year and a half for these eggs to grow to the size, how long does the squid itself live, do you know? Most cephalopods have one reproductive session, and then they die. So the mother squid, brooding these eggs, will die shortly after they hatch. They take their eggs down into deep water to protect them from predators, and they gently undulate the egg mass that they're carrying in order to keep it oxygenated and keep the eggs clean. But they rely on reserves of nutrients that they store in their livers to get them through the brooding period. So this brooding period, this way of taking care of eggs, is this common to basically all of the deep water squid that you study this type?

Or is there's something unusual about the way that this squid was taking care of its eggs? This is a significant discovery. We first found a squid exhibiting parental care, that is brooding eggs. back in 2005. Prior to that, everyone believed that there were only two ways that squids had their eggs developed. One was to deposit egg cases on the seafloor and then swim away and die, or to release a gelatinous mass of eggs and leave it free floating in the water. So once we discovered that that was the case, we began looking for other deep brooding squids, And we found another couple of species that exhibit the same kind of parental care.

But in terms of other squids, this is a pretty rare occurrence. We always talk to researchers, and they constantly say, especially for the cephalopods that live deep in the ocean, they're constantly finding something new. I mean, do you have a sense of what percentage of the total type of cephalopod population we've actually discovered? You know, there are a lot more out there that we still need to find? I think there's a great deal more that we have yet to learn. And in the few places that are well studied, like the Deep Waters of Bonaire Bay, if we're still going out after, say, 30 years and finding new stuff on virtually every occasion we get into deep water, then think about the rest of the world ocean, which is not nearly as well explored.

I think the opportunities for discovery of new behavior patterns, of new ecological relationships, of new species is overwhelming. Hopefully you can join us again sometime and talk about some new things that you found. Dr. Bruce Robeson is a midwater ecologist, senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute based in Mossland in California. Thanks so much, doctor. You're welcome. Good to talk to you. That's all the time we have for today. Lots of folks help make the show happen. including Sandy Roberts, George Harper, Annie Nero, Jason Rosenberg.

Tomorrow, France spent roughly $1.5 billion to clean up the River Sen ahead of the Paris Summer Olympics. But will it clear up in time for the games, plus other top science stories of the week? Thanks for listening. I'm SciFri producer Shoshana Bucksbaum. Catch you next time.