''Muusoctopus levis'' is a species of

octopus An octopus (: octopuses or octopodes) is a soft-bodied, eight-limbed mollusc of the order Octopoda (, ). The order consists of some 300 species and is grouped within the class Cephalopoda with squids, cuttlefish, and nautiloids. Like oth ...

in the

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Enteroctopodidae Enteroctopodidae is a small family of octopuses. This family was formerly considered a subfamily of the family Octopodidae ''sensu lato'' but this family has now been divided into a number of separate families with Enteroctopodidae as one of them ...

. It was first described by

William Evans Hoyle Dr William Evans Hoyle FRSE (28 January 1855 – 7 February 1926) was a British zoologist. A specialist in deep sea creatures, he worked on classification and illustrations from the Challenger expedition, ''Challenger'' expedition from 1882 ...

in 1885 in an article in the ''

Annals and Magazine of Natural History The ''Journal of Natural History'' is a scientific journal published by Taylor & Francis focusing on entomology and zoology. The journal was established in 1841 under the name ''Annals and Magazine of Natural History'' (''Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist.'') ...

'' detailing the new species of octopus found on as part of the ''Challenger'' expedition; the

type specimen In biology, a type is a particular wikt:en:specimen, specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally associated. In other words, a type is an example that serves to ancho ...

was retrieved from the

Southern Ocean The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the world ocean, generally taken to be south of 60th parallel south, 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is the seco ...

. The species is found in

subantarctic The sub-Antarctic zone is a physiographic region in the Southern Hemisphere, located immediately north of the Antarctic region. This translates roughly to a latitude of between 46th parallel south, 46° and 60th parallel south, 60° south of t ...

waters in the Southern Ocean, particularly surrounding

Heard Island The Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands (HIMI) is an Australian external territory comprising a volcanic group of mostly barren Antarctic islands, about two-thirds of the way from Madagascar to Antarctica. The group's overall land ...

and

Kerguelen Island The Kerguelen Islands ( or ; in French commonly ' but officially ', ), also known as the Desolation Islands (' in French), are a group of islands in the sub-Antarctic region. They are among the most isolated places on Earth, with the closest t ...

, but specimens comparable to ''M. levis'' have also been found at the

Antarctic Peninsula The Antarctic Peninsula, known as O'Higgins Land in Chile and Tierra de San Martin in Argentina, and originally as Graham Land in the United Kingdom and the Palmer Peninsula in the United States, is the northernmost part of mainland Antarctica. ...

Description

It is known to inhabit shallow depths between . It is

predator Predation is a biological interaction in which one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common List of feeding behaviours, feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation ...

y, living and feeding in the

benthic zone The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning "the depths". ...

, where it feeds heavily on

brittle stars Brittle stars, serpent stars, or ophiuroids (; ; referring to the serpent-like arms of the brittle star) are echinoderms in the class Ophiuroidea, closely related to starfish. They crawl across the sea floor using their flexible arms for locomot ...

. In a study in which the stomach contents of 70 specimens were examined, around 50 were shown to have fed only on brittle stars. A study on the reproductive strategies of

coleoid Coleoidea or Dibranchiata is one of the two subclasses of cephalopod molluscs containing all the various taxa popularly thought of as "soft-bodied" or "shell-less" (i.e. octopus, squid and cuttlefish). Unlike its extant sister group Nautiloide ...

cephalopod A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan Taxonomic rank, class Cephalopoda (Greek language, Greek plural , ; "head-feet") such as a squid, octopus, cuttlefish, or nautilus. These exclusively marine animals are characterized by bilateral symm ...

s concluded, while "a simultaneous terminal spawning strategy is most likely" for ''M. levis'', "the egg-length frequency graphs and multivariate analysis also suggest a greater variation in egg-lengths which could lead to spawning over an extended period". The study collected five female ''M. levis'' specimens from the Southern Ocean. They weighed from and the mantle length was from . ''M. levis'' is similar in appearance to another species in the same genus, '' Muusoctopus rigbyae'', which was first described in 2009 based on specimens found in Antarctic trawling surveys near the Antarctic Peninsula, and while similar in appearance, differs from ''M. levis'' in its arm length, the depth of its

interdigital webbing The webbed foot is a specialized limb with interdigital membranes (webbings) that aids in aquatic locomotion, present in a variety of tetrapod vertebrates. This adaptation is primarily found in semiaquatic species, and has convergently evolved ...

, and specific details of its

hectocotylus A hectocotylus (: hectocotyli) is one of the arms of male cephalopods that is specialized to store and transfer spermatophores to the female. Structurally, hectocotyli are muscular hydrostats. Depending on the species, the male may use it merel ...

. Further, the species is found in slightly deeper waters, having been recorded at depths between .

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q3198397 Octopuses Molluscs of the Southern Ocean Cephalopods described in 1885 Taxa named by William Evans Hoyle