Credit: Original text by OIST
Researchers took a close look at bobtail and bottletail squids to establish their evolutionary relationships and the timing of the divergence of different species.
A photo of Euprymna brenneri, the new species of bobtail squid described in the 2019 OIST study. Photo taken by Jeff Jolly, a co-author of this study.
Bobtail and bottletail squids are small marine invertebrates that are easy to collect, reproduce quickly, and can be raised together in large numbers in laboratories, making them useful model animals for research. They’re cephalopods-related to true squid, octopus, and cuttlefish, which are renowned for their intelligence and complex behaviors, but of which scientists still know little about. Now, in a new study, published in Communications Biology, researchers have used genetic techniques to show that bobtail squid and bottletail squid share a relatively recent common ancestor and that major biogeographic events might have shaped the evolution of the many different species.