Meeting Abstract
As we are currently experiencing rapid shifts in organism geographic distribution across the planet, how do we know if a new geographic record for an organism in an under-sampled region represents a new immigrant or newly-discovered native population? In August 2014, octopuses previously unknown in shallow water were discovered in less than 11 m of water in Burrows Bay, near Puget Sound, Washington. Over the subsequent two years 31 of these octopuses have been observed in that bay. These octopuses have proportionally large eyes, do not alter skin texture or change color, have a fold of skin around the lateral margin of the mantle, and lack an ink sac. These characteristics are common among deep-water octopuses and superficially these octopuses appear to be Muusoctopus leioderma, a species known locally but normally found deeper than 70 m, and most commonly between 300 and 500 m. Morphological and genetic evidence, however, have brought this identification into question. These observations represent the shallowest records for the species M. leioderma, and for this genus. These sightings also represent the first in-situ observations of the behavior of this strongly nocturnal species, which includes burrowing into fine sediment. A remaining question concerning the recent discovery of these octopuses is whether this population is endemic to Burrows Bay and simply overlooked, or if these octopuses have recently moved into shallow water.
