Phylogeography of the insular populations of common octopus, Octopus vulgaris Cuvier, 1797, in the Atlantic Macaronesia

Abstract

Exploited, understudied populations of the common octopus, Octopus vulgaris Cuvier, 1797, occur in the northeastern Atlantic (NEA) throughout Macaronesia, comprising the Azores, Madeira and Canaries, and also the Cabo Verde archipelago. This octopus species, found from the intertidal to shallow continental-shelf waters, is largely sedentary, and the subject of intense, frequently unregulated fishing effort. We infer connectivity among insular populations of this octopus. Mitochondrial control region and COX1 sequence datasets reveal two highly divergent haplogroups (α and β) at similar frequencies, with opposing clinal distributions along the sampled latitudinal range. Haplogroups have different demographic and phylogeographic patterns, with origins related to the two last glacial maxima. F ST values suggest a significant differentiation for most pairwise comparisons, including insular and continental samples, from the Galicia and Morocco coasts, with the exception of pairwise comparisons for samples from Madeira and the Canaries populations. Results indicate the existence of genetically differentiated octopus populations throughout the NEA. This emphasizes the importance of regulations by autonomous regional governments of the Azores, Madeira and the Canaries, for appropriate management of insular octopus stocks.

Effects of temperature on the rate of embryonic development of cephalopods in the light of thermal time applied to aquaculture

“…It would be interesting to extend the study to the Macaronesian populations of O. vulgaris (Quinteiro et al . 2020) and to the five different geographical types of the nominal species (Norman et al . 2014).…”

“…1). It would be interesting to extend the study to the Macaronesian populations of O. vulgaris (Quinteiro et al 2020) and to the five different geographical types of the nominal species (Norman et al 2014). Nevertheless, the proper way to compare different populations within a single species and to determine the effect of environmental variables among populations implies the application of tools coming from the field of phylogenetics, population genetics and comparative ecology (Stone et al 2011), which are out of the focus on aquaculture problems here addressed.…”

Molecular evidence for extensive discontinuity between peracarid (Crustacea) fauna of Macaronesian islands and nearby continental coasts: over fifty candidate endemic species

“…[5,[30][31][32][33][34], as the notorious case of the Wallace's line in the Makassar Strait [4], but little is known for the NEA. Differentiation between populations of Webbnesia and those from Iberian Peninsula was also found in taxa with a planktonic phase such as sponges [35], molluscs [36,37] and fish [38], suggesting a phylogeographic discontinuity for marine fauna in general, despite the potential for larval transport by recurring oceanographic features. Long-distance dispersal in peracarideans is mainly due to stochastic events through rafting on floating objects or mediated by human vectors [39,40].…”

Genetic monitoring on the world’s first MSC eco-labeled common octopus (O. vulgaris) fishery in western Asturias, Spain

“…Over the past twenty years, some research has been conducted on studying the Atlantic O. vulgaris population using DNA markers 31 , 49 – 51 . However, the genetic status of O. vulgaris stocks in the southern area of the Bay of Biscay is still poorly studied.…”