An octopus 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 other cephalopods, an octopus is bilaterally symmetric with two eyes and a beaked mouth at the centre point of the eight limbs. The soft body can radically alter its shape, enabling octopuses to squeeze through small gaps. They trail their eight appendages behind them as they swim. The siphon is used both for respiration and for locomotion, by expelling a jet of water. Octopuses have a complex nervous system and excellent sight, and are among the most intelligent and behaviourally diverse of all invertebrates.
James Cook University (JCU) is a public university in North Queensland, Australia. The second oldest university in Queensland, JCU is a teaching and research institution. The university's main campuses are located in the tropical cities of Cairns and Townsville, and one in the city state of Singapore. JCU also has study centres in Mount Isa, Mackay, Thursday Island and Rockhampton. A Brisbane campus, operated by Russo Higher Education, delivers undergraduate and postgraduate courses to international students. The university's main fields of research include environmental sciences, biological sciences, mathematical sciences, earth sciences, agricultural and veterinary sciences, technology and medical and health sciences.
The vampire squid is a small cephalopod found throughout temperate and tropical oceans in extreme deep sea conditions. The vampire squid uses its bioluminescent organs and its unique oxygen metabolism to thrive in the parts of the ocean with the lowest concentrations of oxygen. It has two long retractile filaments, located between the first two pairs of arms on its dorsal side, which distinguish it from both octopuses and squids, and places it in its own order, Vampyromorphida, although its closest relatives are octopods. As a phylogenetic relict, it is the only known surviving member of its order.
Grimpoteuthis is a genus of pelagic cirrate (finned) octopods known as the dumbo octopuses. The name "dumbo" originates from their resemblance to the title character of Disney's 1941 film Dumbo, having two prominent ear-like fins which extend from the mantle above each eye. There are 17 species recognized in the genus.
Cirrina or Cirrata is a suborder and one of the two main divisions of octopuses. Cirrate octopuses have a small, internal shell and two fins on their head, while their sister suborder Incirrina has neither. The fins of cirrate octopods are associated with a unique cartilage-like shell in a shell sac. In cross-section, the fins have distinct proximal and distal regions, both of which are covered by a thin surface sheath of muscle.
James Cook University in Singapore is a branch campus of James Cook University, a public research university based in Australia. Established in 2003, it is currently the only overseas institution with university status in Singapore. While the university offers a comprehensive range of courses, it specialises in ecology, marine and environmental sciences. The Singapore campus is located between Kallang and Geylang in the Central Region on the former site of the Manjusri Secondary School.
Alexandra Yurievna "Sasha" Aikhenvald (Eichenwald) is an Australian-Brazilian linguist specialising in linguistic typology and the Arawak language family of the Brazilian Amazon basin. She is a professorial research fellow at Central Queensland University
Obinautilus is an extinct genus of shelled cephalopod that has been variously identified as an argonautid octopod or a nautilid. It is known from the Late Oligocene to Pliocene of Japan. The shell is discoidal and very involute, with rapidly expanding and compressed whorls, fine radial ribs, a rounded venter with a shallow furrow, and almost closed umbilicus.
Thaumeledone is a genus of octopuses in the family Octopodidae found in deep waters in the Southern Hemisphere.
Muusoctopus levis is a species of octopus in the family Enteroctopodidae. It was first described by William Evans Hoyle in 1885 in an article in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History detailing the new species of octopus found on HMS Challenger as part of the Challenger expedition; the type specimen was retrieved from the Southern Ocean. The species is found in subantarctic waters in the Southern Ocean, particularly surrounding Heard Island and Kerguelen Island, but specimens comparable to M. levis have also been found at the Antarctic Peninsula.
Thaumeledone gunteri is a species of small, benthic, deep-sea octopus found in the bathyal zone in the Southern Ocean near South Georgia.
Katherine Wilson is a molecular biologist and a marine scientist. She is also the executive director of the science division at the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH), New South Wales. Wilson is responsible for the delivery of OEH's science program, which provides technical analysis, expert advice and research to support the NSW government's policy and program objectives in environmental management. As a member of the OEH Executive, Wilson guides delivery of services ranging from energy efficiency programs to management of national parks. Wilson is also a Board Member of the Low Carbon Living Cooperative Research Centre and Chair of the External Advisory Committee, Australian Rivers and Wetlands Centre, University of New South Wales.
Nerida Gaye Wilson is an invertebrate marine molecular biologist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation who has interests in diversity, systematics, phylogeny, phylogeography and behavior. Wilson has been instrumental in demonstrating the level of marine cryptic species complexes in Antarctic waters, testing the circumpolar distribution paradigm with molecular data, and using interdisciplinary approaches to show how Antarctic diversity may have been generated. Her work with NOAA on Antarctic Marine Living Resources has been used to regulate exploratory benthic fisheries.
Elizabeth Marchant Truswell is a former Chief Scientist at the Australian Geological Survey Organisation and is known for her application of recycled palynomorph distribution as an indicator of sub-ice geology.
Delphine Lannuzel is an Australian sea ice biogeochemist. She is a professor at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), University of Tasmania.
Louise Allcock is a British researcher, best known for her work on ecology and evolution of the cephalopods of the Southern Ocean and deep sea. She is the editor of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
Gretta Tatyana Pecl is an Australian marine ecologist, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, and the Director of the Centre for Marine Socioecology (CMS) at the University of Tasmania. Her work focuses on species and ecosystem responses to climate change, as well as using socioecological approaches to adapt natural resource management for climate change. She is on the editorial board of Springer Nature's Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, and is a Subject Editor for Ecography.
Opisthoteuthis bruuni is a species of finned cirrate octopus found along the western coast of South America. Their tissue is almost jelly-like, and they have short, round bodies.
Danielle L. Dixson was previously an Associate Professor of Marine Ecology in the School of Marine Science and Policy at the University of Delaware. Her research focusses on how human-induced change to marine ecosystems impacts animal behaviour. Her work, now known to be fraudulent, was about understanding how ocean acidification affects the behaviour of coral reef fishes.
Opisthoteuthis hardyi is a lesser-known octopus species. It was described in 2002 from a male caught off the Shag Rocks, which are far south in the Atlantic Ocean near the Falkland Islands.
