Octopods of the Canary Islands. New records and biogeographic relationships

ABSTRACT

Two octopod species are reported from the Canary Islands (eastern Atlantic Ocean) for the first time: the deep sea four-horn octopus, Pteroctopus tetracirrhus (Delle Chiaje, 1830) and the gelatinous giant octopus, Haliphron atlanticus Steenstrup, 1861. Both female specimens were caught in Tenerife. Haliphron atlanticus is described from fresh remains found floating close to the southwest coast and the second species, P. tetracirrhus, is described from a specimen captured in a shrimp trap at 200 m depth on the southeastern coast of Tenerife. With these two additions the revised and updated list of octopod species of the Canary Islands now comprises eight families and 18 species, all of them incirrate octopods. The zoogeographic relationships of octopod species from other Atlantic regions, including the Mediterranean Sea, were studied. The likely directions of faunal flows were inferred based on affinity indices, showing that Mauritania could be the most probable source of the octopod species of the Canary Islands and the rest of the Macaronesian archipelagos.

KEYWORDS:

• Haliphron atlanticus
• Pteroctopus tetracirrhus
• Cephalopoda
• biogeography

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thanks the crew of Bonadea II especially Sergio D. Hernández Herrera. We are also grateful to the staff of Spanish Institute of Oceanography in Tenerife, especially to José F. González and Eduardo Almansa for their kind support. Thanks to Jacobo Marrero for his help during the transport of the specimens. We are indebted to the anonymous reviewers for their corrections and constructive comments that greatly improved the first version of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Alejandro Escánez http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6956-2974

Rodrigo Riera http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1264-1625