Digestive dynamics during chyme formation of Octopus maya (Mollusca, Cephalopoda)

Timing of digestion, absorption and assimilation in octopus species from tropical (Octopus maya) and subtropical-temperate (O. mimus) ecosystems

“…This finding supports previous studies suggesting that the main role of acidic protease (presumably cathepsines) in octopus digestion is as extracellular digestive protease (Martínez et al 2011a(Martínez et al , 2012. We observed that GJ enzyme activity in O. maya exhibited several peaks throughout the digestive process, indicating that the release of digestive enzymes from the DG occurred in 2 pulses (Semmens 2002, Martínez et al 2012. Aside from the initial enzymes stored in the crop before digestion, there was only one peak of enzyme activity in the GJ of O. mimus, suggesting that there was only one more pulse of enzymes from the DG during the digestion process.…”

“…Acidic proteases were several times more active than alkaline proteases in O. maya and O. mimus. This finding supports previous studies suggesting that the main role of acidic protease (presumably cathepsines) in octopus digestion is as extracellular digestive protease (Martínez et al 2011a(Martínez et al , 2012. We observed that GJ enzyme activity in O. maya exhibited several peaks throughout the digestive process, indicating that the release of digestive enzymes from the DG occurred in 2 pulses (Semmens 2002, Martínez et al 2012.…”

“…Previous experiments performed with O. maya confirmed that animals fed with crab used ingested protein as a source of energy via the gluconeogenic pathway, which facilitated the accumulation of glycogen and its posterior release as glucose , Martínez et al 2012, Baeza-Rojano et al 2013. In the present study, DG protein and glycogen levels in O. maya and O. mimus followed an inverse relationship throughout the digestive process, confirming the role of protein as a source of energy.…”

“…We estimated that an individual O. maya of 900 g ww would need ca. 20 min to ingest a ~100 g ww crab (Martínez et al 2012), whereas a period of The essentiality of n-3 highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFA) in the diet of fish is directly re lated to the role of HUFA, as components of phospholipid biomembranes, in response to changes in environmental temperature (Tocher 2003 Sig. Sig.…”

“…O. mimus specimens (n = 28) were sampled at 8 time points: 0, 30, 90, 150, 210, 270, 330 and 390 min after feeding (see Table 1 for details of the number sampled at each time). The times after feeding at which the animals were sampled were determined from previous experiments with both species, and by taking into account that the digestive process may be faster at the beginning in the tropical O. maya than in the temperate O. mimus (Carrasco & Guisado 2010, Martínez et al 2012. Crabs were deposited in the tanks and octopuses were left with the prey for 20 to 30 min, which was sufficient time for them to ingest the crabs (Mar tínez et al 2012).…”