It's no real big secret that researchers still don't know much about what lies deep within the ocean's unreachable depths. And thus it is ever evident that marine ecologists also do not known a lot about life at the lower depths. But with a new study published this week in the journal Current Biology, researchers now reveal that even the creatures they have found and studied in detail may house some strange secrets of the vast oceans, as well.
In the new study published today, April 20, an international team of researchers led by Henk-Jan Hoving of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, the researchers reveal that while life may move at a slower pace for vampire squids in the open ocean, they appear to have a reproductive cycle unique amongst other living coleoid cephalopods. Instead of reproducing all at once at the end of their life-cycle, these strange creatures rather alternate between times of spawning and resting phases as well. It's a pattern of multiple spawning most commonly seen amongst fish species, but it is also one that coincides with what researchers might guess by the squids' rather slow-paced lifestyles.
"Their slow mode of life seems insufficient to support one big reproductive event, unlike other coleoid cephalopods" Hoving says. "Perhaps it is therefore that vampire squid return to a gonadal resting phase after spawning, and presumably start accumulating energy for a new reproductive cycle."
It's an important discovery that helps researchers better understand just how these creatures are able to procreate and survive as opposed to other shallow-water squid species, but it is also a discovery that happened by accident. When analyzing records of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History the researchers found females in a reproductive resting phase and devised their hypothesis then. And now they think that these, and other deep-sea dwelling species may reveal more secrets of the ocean's depths than we ever thought of before.
"We know very little about deep-sea organisms and their life-cycle patterns, in particular in the water column of the deep sea" Hoving says. "The patterns we know from coastal and shallow-water organisms may not apply to deep-sea species. [Therefore] we need to enhance our knowledge of deep-sea pelagic organisms and the system they are part of, since the pelagic deep sea is the largest living space on the planet."
"A better understanding of this unique marine ecosystem will eventually allow for better development of management and conservation strategies."
