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New information on the life history of cephalopods off west Greenland

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Abstract

We examined 323 cephalopods collected by bottom trawl from depths between 162 and 536 m near Disko island, West Greenland. The most abundant species were the boreoatlantic armhook squid Gonatus fabricii, the sepiolid Rossia moelleri and the spoonarm octopus Bathypolypus arcticus. From this sampling we provide new information on the population structure, bathymetric distribution and the reproductive biology of cephalopods from this area. Special emphasis is given to the sepiolid R. moelleri, for which the life cycle is proposed. Further, this study provides new relationships of beak size to mantle length and wet body mass for G. fabricii, R. moelleri and B. arcticus.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Kai Wieland and the crew of RV “Paamiut” for collecting the cephalopods. R.P. F. was funded by the Greenland Homerule Government according to EU Athens agreement arcticle 9. Constructive comments of D. Schnack, U. Piatkowski, J. Schmidt and three anonymous referees that helped to improve the manuscript are gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leibniz Institute for Marine Sciences IFM-GEOMAR, Düsternbrooker Weg 20, 24105, Kiel, Germany

    Karsten Zumholz

  2. Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Nuuk, Greenland

    Rikke P. Frandsen

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  1. Karsten Zumholz
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  2. Rikke P. Frandsen
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Correspondence to Karsten Zumholz.

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Zumholz, K., Frandsen, R.P. New information on the life history of cephalopods off west Greenland. Polar Biol 29, 169–178 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-005-0036-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-005-0036-y

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