Meeting Abstract

59.6  Thursday, Jan. 6  Body Patterns of The Humboldt Squid Dosidicus gigas: Diversity in a Uniform World TRUEBLOOD, L.A.*; SEIBEL, B.A.; La Sierra University; University of Rhode Island lloyd.trueblood@lasierra.edu

Cephalopods rapidly alter their external appearance, arguably better than any other group of organisms. Ethograms describe body appearance by separating body patterns into components of color, bioluminescence, skin texture, body posture and locomotion as a way to quantify cephalopod behavior. Most cephalopod ethograms have focused on species living in shallow, nearshore environments that are structurally and optically complex. A commonly posed, but untested, hypothesis states that these species will have a greater diversity of body patterns compared to species from less complex environments (e.g. the open ocean and deep sea). Here we test this hypothesis by creating an ethogram of an open ocean squid, Dosidicus gigas. Observations via remotely operated vehicle (ROV) allowed us to record pattern components and their duration. We found that D. gigas has a catalog of components comparable to cephalopods from nearshore environments, with 29 chromatic, 15 postural, and 6 locomotory components. Of all observations, 68% included countershading, suggesting that crypsis for predator avoidance and prey capture is important. We discuss the functional roles of recorded body patterns in the behavioral ecology of this open ocean species and conclude that these metrics are not necessarily indicative of habitat complexity because the components are used in fundamentally different ways.