Octopus vulgaris

The common octopus ( Octopus vulgaris ) is nowadays the most demanded cephalopod species for human consumption. This species was also postulated for aquaculture diversification to supply its increasing demand in the market worldwide, which only relies on continuously declining field captures. In addition, they serve as model species for biomedical and behavioral studies. Body parts of marine species are usually removed before reaching the final consumer as by-products in order to improve preservation, reduce shipping weight, and increase product quality...

Consumer expectations regarding the quality of octopus are often frustrated and dissatisfaction is frequent, namely due to the excessive reduction in weight after cooking. Therefore, a rapid and non-destructive method based in time domain reflectometry (TDR) was developed for the control of water added to octopus ( Octopus vulgaris and Eledone cirrhosa ). O. vulgaris had significant higher values of moisture content, moisture/protein ratio, and cooking loss than E. cirrhosa . Immersion in freshwater increased the weight of O...

The high demand and economic relevance of cephalopods make them prone to food fraud, including related to harvest location. Therefore, there is a growing need to develop tools to unequivocally confirm their capture location. Cephalopod beaks are nonedible, making this material ideal for traceability studies as it can also be removed without a loss of commodity economic value. Within this context, common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) specimens were captured in five fishing areas along the Portuguese coast. Untargeted multi-elemental total X-ray fluorescence analysis of the octopus beaks revealed a high abundance of Ca, Cl, K, Na, S, and P, concomitant with the keratin and calcium phosphate nature of the material...

Octopus vulgaris (Cuvier, 1797) is a cephalopod species with great economic value. In western Asturias (northwest of Spain), O. vulgaris artisanal fisheries are relatively well monitored and conditionally eco-labeled by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). Despite this, the Asturian octopus stocks have not been genetically assessed so far. In order to improve the current fishery plan and contrast the octopus eco-label validity in Asturias, 539 individuals from five regions of the O. vulgaris geographic distribution, including temporal samplings in Asturias, were collected and genotyped at thirteen microsatellite loci...

Infectious diseases in aquaculture could be associated with high mortalities and morbidity rates, resulting in negative impacts to fish farming industry, consumers, and the environment. Octopods are reared near marine fish farming areas, and this may represent a major risk since fish pathogens may cause pathologies to octopods. Up to date cephalopods immune defense and pathologies, are incompletely understood. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the effect of water temperature and challenge route on hemocyte phagocytosis in vitro after experimental challenge of common octopus with Photobacterium damselae subsp...

The main goal of the present study is to determine the sources of methylmercury (MeHg) for high fish-consumption populations with the Portuguese population as showcase, as Portugal is the EU country with the highest fish consumption per capita (2019: 59.91 kg year-1 ). Since limited information is available on the effective levels of mercury after culinary treatments, cooked and raw codfish (Gadus morhua), hake (Merluccius merluccius), octopus (Octopus vulgaris), horse mackerel (Trachurus trachurus) and sardine (Sardina pilchardus) were considered...

Octopuses are mollusks that have evolved intricate neural systems comparable with vertebrates in terms of cell number, complexity and size. The brain cell types that control their sophisticated behavioral repertoire are still unknown. Here, we profile the cell diversity of the paralarval Octopus vulgaris brain to build a cell type atlas that comprises mostly neural cells, but also multiple glial subtypes, endothelial cells and fibroblasts. We spatially map cell types to the vertical, subesophageal and optic lobes...

Soft-bodied cephalopods such as octopuses are exceptionally intelligent invertebrates with a highly complex nervous system that evolved independently from vertebrates. Because of elevated RNA editing in their nervous tissues, we hypothesized that RNA regulation may play a major role in the cognitive success of this group. We thus profiled messenger RNAs and small RNAs in three cephalopod species including 18 tissues of the Octopus vulgaris . We show that the major RNA innovation of soft-bodied cephalopods is an expansion of the microRNA (miRNA) gene repertoire...

The effects on lipid damage in canned horse mackerel ( Trachurus trachurus ) of a prior frozen storage (-18 °C) period and the presence of an octopus ( Octopus vulgaris ) cooking juice (OCJ) in the packing medium were investigated. An increase of the frozen storage time favoured an increase ( p < 0.05) of free fatty acid (FFA), peroxide, and thiobarbituric acid reactive substance contents and a decrease ( p < 0.05) of the phospholipid (PL) value and polyene index. Furthermore, an increased presence of OCJ in the packing medium led to an inhibitory effect ( p < 0...

This study aims to find antioxidant peptides from octopus protein hydrolyzates and verify the protective effects against H2 O2 -induced oxidative stress in IEC-6 cells. After the alcalase hydrolysate was ultrafiltrated, purified by Sephadex G-25 gel fractionation and semipreparative reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC), 16 peptides were identified, and chemically synthesized. In particular, the peptides AQNY, AMMLAW, FEGAW, GGAW, VDTVVCVW, and VVCLW showed better oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) and ABTS radical scavenging capacity...

Parasitism of cephalopods is common, including infection with Aggregata spp., Ichthyobodo spp ., dicyemids, cestodes of the orders Tetraphyllidea and Trypanorhynchidea, and various crustaceans. Cestodiasis in octopuses is reported, although a full histologic description of lesions has not been previously described. Cestodiasis was identified in 10 octopuses of 4 different species, which included 4 common octopuses ( Octopus vulgaris ), 3 Caribbean reef octopuses ( Octopus briareus ), 2 two-spot octopuses ( Octopus bimaculoides ), and 1 giant Pacific octopus ( Enteroctopus dofleini )...

Cephalopods have been considered enigmatic animals that have attracted the attention of scientists from different areas of expertise. However, there are still many questions to elucidate the way of life of these invertebrates. The aim of this study is to construct a reference transcriptome in Octopus vulgaris early life stages to enrich existing databases and provide a new dataset that can be reused by other researchers in the field. For that, samples from different developmental stages were combined including embryos, newly-hatched paralarvae, and paralarvae of 10, 20 and 40 days post-hatching...

Current understanding of cephalopod digestive tract physiology is based on relatively "old" literature and a "mosaic of data" from multiple species. To provide a background to the discussion of methodologies for investigating physiology we first review the anatomy of the cephalopod digestive tract with a focus on Octopus vulgaris , highlighting structure-function relationships and species differences with potential functional consequences (e.g., absence of a crop in cuttlefish and squid; presence of a caecal sac in squid)...

Episodic-like memory has mainly been studied through experimental tasks in which subjects have to remember what they ate, where and when or in which context. Seemingly quite common in mammals and corvids, episodic-like memory abilities have also been demonstrated in the common cuttlefish, a cephalopod mollusc. To explore if this ability is common to all cephalopods or if it has emerged to face specific ecological constraints, we conducted an episodic-like memory task with seven Octopus vulgaris. Only one individual learnt the replenishing rates during the training and subsequently showed episodic-like memory abilities, whereas the other individuals favoured simpler foraging strategies, such as avoidance of familiarity and alternation, use of win-stay strategy and risk-sensitivity...

Mirror self-recognition (MSR) is a potential indicator of self-awareness. This capability has been widely investigated among vertebrates, yet it remains largely unstudied in invertebrates. Here we report preliminary data about behavioural responses exhibited by common octopuses ( Octopus vulgaris ) toward reflected images of themselves and explore a procedure for marking octopus' skin in order to conduct the Mark test. Octopuses ( n = 8) received four familiarization trials with a mirror and four familiarization trials with a control stimulus: a non-reflective panel ( Panel group, n = 4) or the sight of a conspecific housed in an adjacent tank ( Social group, n = 4)...

Provenance and traceability are crucial aspects of seafood safety, supporting managers and regulators, and allowing consumers to have clear information about the origin of the seafood products they consume. In the present study, we developed an innovative spectral approach based on total reflection X-ray fluorescence (TXRF) spectroscopy to identify the provenance of seafood and present a case study for five economically relevant marine species harvested in different areas of the Atlantic Portuguese coast: three bony fish- Merluccius merluccius , Scomber colias , and Sparus aurata ; one elasmobranch- Raja clavata ; one cephalopod- Octopus vulgaris ...

Cephalotocin is a bioactivity-regulating peptide expressed in octopus ( Octopus vulgaris ). The peptide sequence of cephalotocin is very similar to the peptide sequence of mammalian vasopressin, and cephalotocin has been proposed to mainly activate arginine vasopressin 1b receptor (Avpr1b) in the brain. However, the effects of cephalotocin on mammalian behavior have not been studied. In the current study, cephalotocin significantly reduced both the frequency and amplitude of spontaneous excitatory postsynaptic currents (sEPSCs) recorded from not only cultured neuronal cells from postnatal Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats but also hippocampal slices from 4-week-old male C57BL/6 mice...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Cephalopods, in particular octopus ( Octopus vulgaris ), have the ability to alter their appearance or body pattern by showing a wide range of camouflage by virtue of their chromatophores, which contain nanostructured granules of ommochrome pigments. Recently, the antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of ommochromes have become of great interest; therefore, in this study, the pH-dependent redox effect of the extraction solvent on the antioxidant potential and the structural characterization of the pigments were evaluated...

Underwater volcanic eruptions are a type of natural contamination that affect all marine organisms at a local level. These eruptions usually begin and end a degassing stage of the volcano that, although they do not affect the magnitude of magma emanation, affect organisms to a lesser degree locally, such as cephalopods that due to their metabolism and trophic level, are good bioindicators of contamination. A total of 180 samples of three species of cephalopods were collected for the study: sixty Sepia officinalis, sixty Octopus vulgaris and sixty Loligo vulgaris in the area of the submarine volcano in El Hierro, Tenerife and Lanzarote in the Canary Islands (twenty samples per species in each location), and the metal concentrations (Al, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Li, Ni, Pb and Zn) in each of the samples were analyzed...