Publication Abstract

Fishing experiments employing a commercial shrimp trawler in the Red Sea off Al Qunfudah, Saudi Arabia at a depth of 9 m revealed the occurrence of a new octopus species under the genus Callistoctopus. The new species described using morphological characters and molecular analysis of Cytochrome c oxidase (COI) partial gene sequences and named Callistoctopus kausti sp. nov. The species is morphologically distinguished from the other Callistoctopus species by key characteristics such as colour pattern, sculpture, the shape of the funnel organ, gill lamellae count, arm-length index, web-depth index, and the structure of rachidian teeth. The partial sequence of the cytochrome c-oxidase subunit I (COI) showed a length of 567 bp and the phylogenetic analysis revealed the maximum pairwise % identities of 93-94% with two closely related species, Callistoctopus macropus and Callistoctopus luteus. The type specimen and associated internal organs dissected are housed in the archive collections of the Beacon Development Department laboratory at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia with accession numbers BD/KAUST-1222-007-010. The sequence was deposited in GenBank database with an accession number …….. (To be inserted)

Sirajudheen Thayyil Kadengal; Sheeja Gireesh; Nesrine Boulila; Cristina Andrés-Barrao; Vlad Laptikhovsky; Ian Gleaddall; March Dimech