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Contents Vol 56(5)

Statoliths as ‘black boxes’ (life recorders) in squid

Alexander I. Arkhipkin
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Falkland Islands Government Fisheries Department, PO Box 598, FIPASS, Stanley, FIQQ 1ZZ, Falkland Islands. Email: aarkhipkin@fisheries.gov.fk

Marine and Freshwater Research 56(5) 573-583 https://doi.org/10.1071/MF04158
Submitted: 15 July 2004  Accepted: 10 March 2005   Published: 21 July 2005

Abstract

The present study presents an overview of recent developments in statoliths studies. Statoliths are calcareous structures located in the equilibrium organs of cephalopods, which serve to detect body accelerations during movement in water. They are perfect ‘black boxes’ because they record a lot of information about the lives of squid and cuttlefish. For instance, it is possible to reveal the hatchling size and temperature of embryonic development, estimate age and growth rates of the animal with daily precision, date life transitions, analyse possible migratory routes and population structure of squid using trace element analysis, and even reveal how many spawning events a given animal has had by analysing statolith microstructure. Furthermore, because the paralarval statolith is embedded completely within the adult statolith, its features can be used to identify cephalopod paralarvae, which are sometimes very different from adult animals. The shape of statoliths is physiologically specific, which enables the determination of the movement pattern of the animal. Statoliths are usually one of the few remains of squid in fossil records, and their features can be used to infer ideas about the life styles of extinct species.

Extra keywords: growth increments, growth rates, squid ageing, statolith microstructure.


Acknowledgments

I am grateful to all my friends and colleagues in the Atlantic Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (AtlantNIRO, Kaliningrad, Russia), All-Russian Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO, Moscow, Russia) and Fisheries Department of the Falkland Islands Government (Stanley, Falkland Islands) for their generous help in the collection of squid statoliths in different parts of the world’s oceans, and for their invaluable discussions and comments. I thank Dr Lianos Triantafillos (Fisheries Department, Stanley, Falkland Islands) for his comments and editing the present paper. Some parts of the present study came from my PhD Thesis (Candidate in Biological Sciences), which I defended successfully in the P. P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanography, Moscow in 1989.


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