What species of tiny squid is this ?

[archman]

Heres a couple of example of a Bobtail and second a Cuttlefish hatchling. The bobtail does look remarkably like a cuttlefish i think as well. But my buddy who took the photos is a marine biologist specializing in Indo West Pacific marine life. I really think Calypsonick's first photo truly shows the characteristics of a squid as opposed to a cuttle. But you may be right, i think we need a invert specialist to tell us...

Bite me, I AM an invertebrate specialist. :05: What, you think we can look at pictures of any critter without a backbone and whip out species names? I can't even do that for animals within my own sub-specialty.

Bobtail's and cuttlefish were originally lumped in the same taxon for very good reason; they bear a close resemblance to one another. I don't recall why they were recently split, maybe something to do with the cuttlebone, or lack thereof. They are VERY hard to tell apart when they're teeny like this. Bobtail's are supposed to have more rounded posteriors than cuttlefish, but that's a very loose diagnostic, and not very useful from the photo angles. Usually soft-bodied cephalopods are tagged by painstaking examination of the tentacles and suckers, bleah.

Getting an ID would be difficult, even for a cephalopod specialist. Best bet's to get a regional cephalopod expert to figure it out. Keep in mind that new species in these groups are still being reported in the Indo-Pacific.

One of the guys at the University of Texas Medical Branch studies these things in this part of the world. I forget his name and their website's not working for me at the moment, but www.cephbase.org is usually up. It might be Jim Wood that's the man to contact.

Another big cephalopod research site is here.
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/eurosquid/

There's an e-list to post questions, though I've never used it.

 

[LeslieH]

Thanks Mike! I was thinking Bobtail Squid also but of the four or five pictures I have seen of Bobtails, I have yet to see one with the reddish color of the first picture or with tentacles as small and short as these guys. I hope we get more posts directing us to more pictures.

Sepiadarium kochi is a good guess based on the orange chromatophores, the kidney shaped fins & its occurrence in Timor. S. kochi is a bottletail squid as opposed to the bobtails. They're in different families but they're both in the same order. My source was Mark Norman's book "Cephalopods: A World Guide"

 

[archman]

Sepiadarium kochi is a good guess based on the orange chromatophores, the kidney shaped fins & its occurrence in Timor. S. kochi is a bottletail squid as opposed to the bobtails. They're in different families but they're both in the same order. My source was Mark Norman's book "Cephalopods: A World Guide"

That's a good book. I have been eyeballing it for a while now.

I can't tell what the most current higher taxonomy for these things are anymore. My newest 2004 Barnes text has cuttlefish and bobtail's in the same Order but different subOrders, but the taxonomic listing from Jim Wood's "The Cephalopod Page" has the Order Sepiodea nixed and the two subOrders elevated as Orders in their own right. I can't figure out who has the most current system... maybe it's in dispute. The most recent taxonomy I can look up online is dated 2001.

CephBase is still down. It's a wonderful resource for this very thing. Figures...

 

[LeslieH]

I can't figure out who has the most current system... maybe it's in dispute. The most recent taxonomy I can look up online is dated 2001.
CephBase is still down. It's a wonderful resource for this very thing. Figures...

It's the usual. Authority A says it's "blab" and Authority B says it's "blip", each has followers, and people unfamiliar with the group just use the latest publication. That's why our polychaete collection is arranged alphabetically by family/genus/species - so I don't have to shuffle the jars on a couple thousand shelves every time someone publishes! :11doh:

 

[archman]

That's why our polychaete collection is arranged alphabetically by family/genus/species - so I don't have to shuffle the jars on a couple thousand shelves every time someone publishes! :11doh:

That must be a common strategy, our research collections are set up the same way. And we only have several dozen shelves to contend with, for all our invertebrates. The greedy vertebrate folks take up most of our warehouse space.

For polychaetes, I generally conform with Fauchald's old 1977 work, and ignore all the but the most glaring updates (i.e. pogo's). But cephalopods are "easy" compared to worms, so their taxonomy should be more clear cut. Discounting all the recent innovations in genetics, of course. I hate innovation.

 

[Mike Veitch]

Bite me, I AM an invertebrate specialist. :05: What, you think we can look at pictures of any critter without a backbone and whip out species names? I can't even do that for animals within my own sub-specialty.

He he he, bite me... Thats my line! Sorry!

I do know who James is (as does Leslie) maybe i will send him over to have a look...

HI Leslie...nice to see you over here

 

[LeslieH]

Hi Mike. Yeah, I usually lurk here. Arch, Rick & others do a fine job without me butting in. James will probably want to ask Calypsonick for permission to use his great images on Cephbase; Cephbase doesn't have any Sepiadarium yet (if that's what this is).

That must be a common strategy, our research collections are set up the same way. And we only have several dozen shelves to contend with, for all our invertebrates. The greedy vertebrate folks take up most of our warehouse space.
For polychaetes, I generally conform with Fauchald's old 1977 work, and ignore all the but the most glaring updates (i.e. pogo's). But cephalopods are "easy" compared to worms, so their taxonomy should be more clear cut. Discounting all the recent innovations in genetics, of course. I hate innovation.

Surprisingly some places arrange their stuff phyletically which makes no practical sense to me at all. Only a couple dozen shelves? Don't you guys have tons of stuff packed away from all the surveys & theses done over the years at A&M? I start drooling when I think of all the polychaetes stashed somewhere over there and not on my shelves.... .

For polys most people now follow Rouse & Pleijel's updating of Rouse & Fauchald/ Fauchald & Rouse. Damn taxonomists, always messing things up!

 

[archman]

Only a couple dozen shelves? Don't you guys have tons of stuff packed away from all the surveys & theses done over the years at A&M? I start drooling when I think of all the polychaetes stashed somewhere over there and not on my shelves.... .

We're not an invertebrate-savvy institution, collecting-wise, excepting insects for the agronomy folks. Our major (and only) real claim to fame is our deepwater Gulf of Mexico stuff, mostly all from 1960's and 1970's expeditions. You California folks get out on the water a lot more often than we do, and can range all over the Pacific like hooligans. Texans are trapped in the piddly Gulf of Mexico, which on a map, doesn't look much bigger than our state!

Ironically, our invertebrate curator (and my professor) is another Californian. That's suspicious.

Most of our oceanographers collect the same crap over and over again, and don't bother to identify anything. I don't think many of them could, anyway.

I'm sure we have more junk stashed away, but it's likely rotting away in unlabeled containers in some grassy field or rusted storeshed. We had most of a whole mid-1980's expedition series get trashed that way. Man, was I ticked.

Our two resident worm experts jealously guard their specimens, and both now reside at our maritime campus. Most of Fain Hubbard's worms are stored in an ultra-compact system of tiny vials and jars, that could be crammed into a closet. He trained me how to identify sediment infauna groups, but there was no way I was going to learn all those bloody worm families from beat up near-microscopic specimens. Half were probably capitellids... yuk.

 

[Vie]

Sepiadarium kochi is a good guess based on the orange chromatophores, the kidney shaped fins & its occurrence in Timor. S. kochi is a bottletail squid as opposed to the bobtails. They're in different families but they're both in the same order. My source was Mark Norman's book "Cephalopods: A World Guide"

Thanks. Please see post #6

 

[Mike Veitch]

I contacted James Woods with a link to this thread, hopefully he may chime in.