Age validation in Octopus maya (Voss and Solís, 1966) by counting increments in the beak sections of known age individuals

The present study was carried out to validate the daily deposition and age estimation by using beak rostrum sagittal sections increments of cultivated Octopus maya (Voss and Solís, 1966). This study validates for first time the periodicity of beak increments by using animals of known age. We analyze...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Barcenas, G.V., Perales-Raya, Catalina, Bartolomé-Baraza, Aurora, Almansa, Eduardo, Rosas, Carlos
Format: article
Status:Versión aceptada para publicación
Publication Date:2014
Country:España
Institution:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repository:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/324662
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/324662
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Octopus maya
Centro Oceanográfico de Canarias
Pesquerías
Beak
Age
Growth increments
Age validation
Description
Summary:The present study was carried out to validate the daily deposition and age estimation by using beak rostrum sagittal sections increments of cultivated Octopus maya (Voss and Solís, 1966). This study validates for first time the periodicity of beak increments by using animals of known age. We analyzed the rostrum sagittal sections (RSS) of upper and lower beaks in 40 juveniles of O. maya divided into four age groups (63, 87, 105 and 122 days) with 10 individuals per group. The animals were fed with a soft diet allowing obtaining age estimations not affected by the beak erosion. At the same time 50 animals were sampled every 20 days until 120 days old to obtain an age-body wet weight (BW) curve which could be compared with the age-BW curve obtained using age estimations from beaks. Co-variance analysis showed no statistical differences between both curves. The number of increments present in the beaks corresponded with the number of days from hatchling. Therefore, it was possible to validate that a growth increment corresponds to a day of life in O. maya, confirming that, up to 122 days old, the beaks counts can be used to determine the age of O. maya.