Sexual maturation in the octopus Eledone cirrhosa Lamarck

Studies of sexual maturation have been made on a large sample of Eledone cirrhosa from the North Sea off Aberdeen, Scotland. In females the wet weights of the ovary and oviducal glands have been recorded for a wide range of body sizes and related to the total body weight. The length dlstribution of a sample of eggs from each ovary was also measured. Assessed either by ovary enlargement or the mean egg length, female E. cirrhosa become mature at a wide ränge of body size and so state of maturity is not predictable from size of the animal. In males the total weight of genital bag is, by contrast, clearly correlated with body weight although this is not true for testis alone, presumably because of transfer of sperm from testis to spermatophoric sac