Turquet's octopus (''Pareledone turqueti'') is a species of

benthic 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". ...

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 ...

with a circumpolar

Antarctic The Antarctic (, ; commonly ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the South Pole, lying within the Antarctic Circle. It is antipodes, diametrically opposite of the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antar ...

distribution. The species has a wide depth range, occurring from shallow waters to 4,000 m deep.Norman, M.D. 2000. ''Cephalopods: A World Guide''. ConchBooks. ''P. turqueti'' grows to 15 cm in mantle length. It is characterised by the absence of a skin ridge round the body, and its nearly smooth skin, which is covered with low granular bumps. In the wild, ''P. turqueti'' is known to be preyed upon by

Patagonian toothfish The Patagonian toothfish (''Dissostichus eleginoides''), also known as Chilean sea bass, mero, and icefish, is a species of notothen found in cold waters () between depths of in the southern Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans and Southern ...

off

South Georgia South Georgia is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic Ocean that is part of the British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. It lies around east of the Falkland Islands. ...

and

Weddell seal The Weddell seal (''Leptonychotes weddellii'') is a relatively large and abundant Earless seal, true seal with a Subantarctic, circumpolar distribution surrounding Antarctica. The Weddell seal was discovered and named in the 1820s during expediti ...

s off the

South Shetland Islands The South Shetland Islands are a group of List of Antarctic and subantarctic islands, Antarctic islands located in the Drake Passage with a total area of . They lie about north of the Antarctic Peninsula, and between southwest of the n ...

. 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 collected in the

Antarctic 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 ...

(65°S, 64°W) and is deposited at the

Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle The French National Museum of Natural History ( ; abbr. MNHN) is the national natural history museum of France and a of higher education part of Sorbonne University. The main museum, with four galleries, is located in Paris, France, within the Ja ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. The species emerged four million years ago and has a twelve-year lifespan. Since these facts are known to science, the species was ideal target for a study on the history of Antarctica. The study found that distinct populations of the species in the

Weddell Sea The Weddell Sea is part of the Southern Ocean and contains the Weddell Gyre. Its land boundaries are defined by the bay formed from the coasts of Coats Land and the Antarctic Peninsula. The easternmost point is Cape Norvegia at Princess Martha C ...

, the

Amundsen Sea The Amundsen Sea is an arm of the Southern Ocean off Marie Byrd Land in western Antarctica. It lies between Cape Flying Fish (the northwestern tip of Thurston Island) to the east and Cape Dart on Siple Island to the west. Cape Flying Fish ...

, and the

Ross Sea The Ross Sea is a deep bay of the Southern Ocean in Antarctica, between Victoria Land and Marie Byrd Land and within the Ross Embayment, and is the southernmost sea on Earth. It derives its name from the British explorer James Clark Ross who ...

had interbred 125,000 years ago. This implies that the

West Antarctic Ice Sheet The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is the segment of the Antarctic ice sheet, continental ice sheet that covers West Antarctica, the portion of Antarctica on the side of the Transantarctic Mountains that lies in the Western Hemisphere. It is cla ...

had melted during the last

interglacial An interglacial period (or alternatively interglacial, interglaciation) is a geological interval of warmer global average temperature lasting thousands of years that separates consecutive glacial periods within an ice age. The current Holocene i ...

period, which corresponds to

Marine Isotope Stage 5 Marine Isotope Stage 5 or MIS 5 is a marine isotope stage in the geologic temperature record, between 130,000 and 80,000 years ago. Sub-stage MIS 5e corresponds to the Last Interglacial, also called the Eemian (in Europe) or Sangamonian (in No ...

. This implies that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is close to collapse due to the impacts of

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

References

External links

GenBank Links for Genetic Information on ''Pareledone turqueti''
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1886272 Octopuses Fauna of Antarctica Cephalopods of South America Cephalopods described in 1905 Molluscs of the Southern Ocean