- Joined
- Feb 18, 2007
- Messages
- 76
I just wanted to share a few pictures of me and Aaron in the lab with the most beautiful Mastigo that I have ever seen. Now, it might be well known that the taxonomy of this family is poorly known. I've been sorting all the Mastigo specimens from NIWA and Te Papa into species groups before I describe and identify them. I have badly damaged, and sad looking squids in jars - and there aren't many to work with. Right now I'm up to about ten species, with possibly one new one, and I've found a fairly clearn division into two families. And then Steve told me that somewhere in AUT there is an unidentified Mastigo, which may belong to a third genus (Echinoteuthis)! It was quite an adventure trying to look through unidentified buckets (often things aren't preserved very well ), but I finally found the most beautiful squid ever! This is an adult of a genus which has only ever been described from paralarvae, and so this will be the first described adult!