''Stoloteuthis maoria'' is a species of

bobtail squid Bobtail squid (order Sepiolida) are a group of cephalopods closely related to cuttlefish. Bobtail squid tend to have a rounder mantle (mollusc), mantle than cuttlefish and have no cuttlebone. They have eight suckered arms and two tentacles and ar ...

native to the southwestern

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

. It occurs in

Cook Strait Cook Strait () is a strait that separates the North Island, North and South Islands of New Zealand. The strait connects the Tasman Sea on the northwest with the South Pacific Ocean on the southeast. It is wide at its narrowest point,McLintock, ...

and Chatham Rise off

North Island The North Island ( , 'the fish of Māui', historically New Ulster) is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but less populous South Island by Cook Strait. With an area of , it is the List ...

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

, and has also been recorded from the Nazca and Sala y Gomez submarine ridges in the eastern Pacific.Reid, A. & P. Jereb 2005. Family Sepiolidae. ''In:'' P. Jereb & C.F.E. Roper, eds. ''Cephalopods of the world. An annotated and illustrated catalogue of species known to date. Volume 1. Chambered nautiluses and sepioids (Nautilidae, Sepiidae, Sepiolidae, Sepiadariidae, Idiosepiidae and Spirulidae)''. FAO Species Catalogue for Fishery Purposes. No. 4, Vol. 1. Rome, FAO. pp. 153–203. ''S. maoria'' has very large eyes and protruding fins. The length of the mantle and head—excluding the tentacles—is up to 38 mm, and the width including fins is up to 36 mm. 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 off New Zealand and is deposited at the National Museum of New Zealand in

Wellington Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the third-largest city in New Zealand (second largest in the North Island ...

.Current Classification of Recent Cephalopoda
/ref> ''S. maoria'' belongs to the genus ''

Stoloteuthis ''Stoloteuthis'' is a small genus of bobtail squid in the Family (biology), family Sepiolidae and the subfamily Heteroteuthidinae with one species, ''Stoloteuthis leucoptera'', which is found in the western and eastern Atlantic Ocean, the Mediter ...

''.

References

External links

Tree of Life web project: ''Stoloteuthis''
Bobtail squid Cephalopods of Oceania Cephalopods described in 1959 Molluscs of New Zealand Molluscs of the Pacific Ocean {{sepiolida-stub