What would the potential lifespan of a sterile octopus be?

[minihands_]

Out of curiosity I began looking at octopus lifespans and I noticed that the reason that cephalopods don’t live very long is because they die right after reproduction. Given an octopus in the wild (lets say for instance a giant pacific octopus) hatches sterile and manages to make it to adulthood, how much longer would it live if it didn’t mate? I can’t seem to find an answer anywhere I look

 

[DWhatley]

The study that I know about in this area is one where they prevented female octopuses from sexually maturing by removing the optic gland. This roughly doubled their lifespan. As I remember the experiment, If even a piece of the gland was reimplanted the animal sexually matured and dies normally (mating does not matter in all cases). Removing the gland after maturity had no effect. Here is a link to prior discussions and the papers

 

[tonmo]

Cool thread. There are some species, like Larger Pacific Striped Octopus, which do not die after laying eggs:

Larger Pacific Striped Octopus: behavior and sex life

(btw, Rich Ross (@Thales) is featured heavily in this article)

 

[DWhatley]

@Thales What are the lifespans of the Larger and Lesser Pacific Striped Octos?

 

[tonmo]

Shoot, the user tag email feature was shut off. How about this? @Thales