Reproductive Behavior of Sepioteuthis australis

[glen]

Hi everyone, came across this full text article on the Cephbase site. It will be of interest to Australian and NZ squid fishers interested in how southern calamary reproduce (includes some nice squid photos).



[url="http://www.cephbase.utmb.edu/refdb/pdf/7879.pdf"]http://www.cephbase.utmb.edu/refdb/pdf/7879.pdf[/url]



Reproductive Behavior in the Squid Sepioteuthis

australis From South Australia: Interactions

on the Spawning Grounds



TROY M. JANTZEN AND JON N. HAVENHAND

School of Biological Sciences, Flinders University

Reference: Biol. Bull. 204: 305–317. (June 2003)



ABSTRACT



Squid behavior is synonymous with distinctive

body patterns, postures, and movements that constitute a

complex visual communication system. These communications

are particularly obvious during reproduction. They are

important for sexual selection and have been identified as a

potential means of species differentiation. Here we present

a detailed account of copulation, mating, and egg deposition

behaviors from in situ observations of the squid Sepioteuthis

australis from South Australia. We identified four mating

types from 85 separate mating attempts: “Male-upturned

mating” (64% of mating attempts); “Sneaker mating”

(33%); “Male-parallel” (2%); and “Head-to-head” (1%).

Intervals between successive egg deposition behaviors were

clearly bimodal, with modes at 2.5 s and 70.0 s. Ninety three

percent of egg capsules contained 3 or 4 eggs (mean =

3.54), and each egg cluster contained between 218 and 1922

egg capsules (mean = 893.9). The reproductive behavior of

S. australis from South Australia was different from that

described for other cephalopod species. More importantly,

comparison between these results and those for other populations

of S. australis suggests that behavior may differ

from one population to another.