Xiao dong Zheng

Ocean University of China | OUC · Department of Aquaculture

The genus Callistoctopus comprises 13 species, and has been reported mostly in the Western Pacific Ocean. Here, we described three new species from China, Ca. paucilamellus sp. nov., Ca. sparsus sp. nov., and Ca. gracilis sp. nov., based on morphometric and meristic characteristics. The diagnoses, descriptions and detailed morphometric data are pro...

Understanding population structure is a priority for evaluating population dynamics of commercially fished cephalopods under fishing pressure and environmental changes. This study employed a multidisciplinary approach to clarify the population structure of Loliolus (Nipponololigo) uyii, a common squid in inshore fisheries. Sampling was conducted mu...

This chapter describes past and present publication trends in octopus research following a systematic mapping approach. Publication rates in popular research topics such as life history and ecology are decreasing, while others are increasing and taking the spotlight. Interest in behaviour has seen a considerable uptick in recent years. Also, rapid...

The external morphology and morphological variations of Sepiella inermis vary across regions, necessitating investigation. However, the histological information on the subcutaneous gland has been insufficient to describe it. In this study, specimens were systematically collected and characterized from the Gulf of Thailand. Regarding external morpho...

Octopus minor is an economically important species, but little is known about the histological pattern and regulatory mechanisms during gonadal development. In this study, we investigated the annual changes in total body weight (TW), gonad somatic index (GSI), gonadal histological features, and transcriptome of O. minor. The results indicated that...

The strategies employed by octopuses for predator avoidance and escape, which are adapted to their structurally simple habitat, have been the subject of much research. In the present study, the shapes and structural characteristics of Octopus minor’s burrows were investigated and the burrowing behavior was also observed to reveal the dynamics of bu...

The external morphological characteristics and proportion variability of spineless cuttlefish, Sepiella inermis , were investigated at seven locations along the coastal waters of Thailand for one year. A total of 396 specimens were collected from Trat (30), Chonburi (61), Samut Songkhram (80), Phetchaburi (75), Surat Thani (30), Songkhla Province (...

Amphioctopus fangsiao (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae) is an important commercial species in the coastal waters of China. In recent years, however, the resource of A. fangsiao have declined because of habitat destruction and overfishing. To analyze the genetic variations of A. fangsiao caused by the fluctuation of resources, the population genetic struct...

Placing shelters in rearing containers is a method of environmental enrichment that can effectively improve the welfare of aquatic animals. However, a set of standard specifications for shelter use is still absent in the artificial culture of Amphioctopus fangsiao. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether shelter type significantly affe...

Ocean acidification (OA) and trace metal pollutants coexist to exert combined effects on the functions and services of marine ecosystems. Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide has caused a decrease in the pH of the ocean, affecting the bioavailability and speciation of trace metals and consequently altering metal toxicity in marine organisms. As an...

Stocking density determines the welfare, growth performance, and even survival of aquatic organisms in aquaculture. However, how stocking density affects cephalopods are still unclear. Here we selected Amphioctopus fangsiao, a promising cephalopod for mariculture, to examine the effect of stocking density on survival, growth, physiology and behavio...

Aggregata Frenzel, 1885 (Apicomplexa) are dangerous protozoan parasites that cause malabsorption syndrome in wild and reared cephalopod species, resulting in significant economic loss to fishery and aquaculture industries. The new parasitic species, Aggregata aspera n. sp., in the digestive tract of Amphioctopus ovulum and Amphioctopus marginatus f...

A total of 142 samples of bigfin reef squid (Sepioteuthis lessoniana FÉRUSSAC IN LESSON, 1831) were collected from the Andaman Sea, Gulf of Thailand, and South China Sea to study their morphological characteristics and assess their genetic divergence. Morphological variations were observed in their body size, number of sucker ring teeth, and the ra...

The population genetic structure of 211 samples of Loliolus (Nipponololigo) beka, which were selected from across seven geographic localities—in the Bohai Sea, the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea—were analyzed using mitochondrial COI and 16S rRNA gene markers. Phylogenetic trees and a haplotype network both showed that the L. (N.) beka localities...

Background Coleoid cephalopods have distinctive neural and morphological characteristics compared to other invertebrates. Early studies reported massive genomic rearrangements occurred before the split of octopus and squid lineages (Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 116:3030-5, 2019), which might be related to the neural innovations of their brain, yet the...

A new octopus species, Callistoctopus tenuipes sp. nov., was formally described from the southeastern coastal waters of China using morphological description and molecular analysis methods. C. tenuipes sp. nov. is a small- to moderate-sized octopus, which is characterized by very narrow and long arms. Although it was previously misidentified as the...

Microplastics are ubiquitous in the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem, increasingly becoming a serious concern for aquatic organism health. However, information regarding the effects of microplastics on cephalopods is remain limited to date. Amphioctopus fangsiao, an important economic species in cephalopods, can serve as a potential indicator of e...

Octopus minor (Sasaki 1920) is an important commercial cephalopod species in China. This species has declined sharply in recent years. Hence, genetic studies of O. minor are imperative to exploit and manage the wild resource. In this study, 46192 microsatellite loci were discovered in 70174 unigenes from the transcriptomic data. Among all of the si...

In this study, we described a new species of octopus and named it Callistoctopus xiaohongxu sp. nov. based on nine specimens captured in the waters of southeast China. Callistoctopus xiaohongxu sp. nov. is a small to moderate-sized octopus. The most characteristic and defining morphological features are the reddish-orange to reddish-brown skin, gil...

Microplastics are broadly used and among the most studied environmental pollutants due to their potential impacts on organisms and human health. Amphioctopus fangsiao (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae) is an important commercial species in the Pacific Northwest and is very popular among consumers owing to its rich nutritional value and fresh flavor. Howeve...

Species delimitation by traditional morphological methods is challenging in cephalopods due to their flexible bodies, changeable pigment traits, and sometimes high morphological homoplasy. Molecular information provides important assistance for taxonomic decision. In this study, we applied three species delimitation methods on 132 cephalopods from...

A new species of parasitic Aggregata, Aggregata sinensis n. sp., is described from the octopuses Amphioctopus fangsiao (d'Orbigny, 1839–1841) and Octopus minor (Sasaki, 1920) (Mollusca: Octopodidae) in China based on morphological data and 18S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequences. The sexual gamogonic and sporogonic stages of the parasite were obser...

en The diamondback squid, Thysanoteuthis rhombus, is the only currently accepted species within the family Thysanoteuthidae. In this study, the mitogenome of T. rhombus was sequenced using the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 platform. Features of the mitogenome were detected, and phylogenetic relationships among the Cephalopoda were reconstructed. Our result...

Amphioctopus ovulum (Sasaki, 1917) is a small to moderate-sized octopus, which can be identified by the iridescent violet ring present in the dark ocellus on the web between the bases of arms II and III. Comprehensive taxonomic review is required to fully characterise this species because the syntypes are missing and the description is insufficient...

Ammonia is one of the major aquatic environmental pollutants that can bring detrimental effects to the growth and survival of aquatic organisms. However, the molecular mechanisms of ammonia toxicity and ammonia excretion in marine invertebrates especially mollusks are still poorly understood. Cephalopods are exclusively ammonotelic with high protei...

This study presented 96 cox1 and 76 cox3 genes of Amphioctopus neglectus populations. Three distinct lineages were formed from phylogenetic trees and networks constructed using haplotypes. Mitogenomes of A. neglectus-a and A. neglectus-b as the representatives of two lineages separated from population genetics were sequenced to compare with A. negl...

Amphioctopus fangsiao is an important fishery resource in northern coastal China, and this species has been developed for commercial fishing and aquacultural purposes. However, its embryos are vulnerable to ambient temperature, which leads to challenges in resource management and conservation. The present study investigated how high temperatures co...

The common long-armed octopus, Octopus minor, is an important component of systems and supports the local fisheries in the coastal areas of northern China. For the fishery management and artificial breeding, especially for the management of exclusive conservation reserves, its role in the ecosystem requires assessment. Therefore, the feeding intens...

Recent studies have shown that coastal and shelf cephalopod populations have increased globally over the last six decades. Although cephalopod landings are dominated by the squid fishery, which represents nearly 80% of the worldwide cephalopod catches, octopuses and cuttlefishes represent ∼10% each. Total reported global production of octopuses ove...

Recent studies have shown that coastal and shelf cephalopod populations have increased globally over the last six decades. Although cephalopod landings are dominated by the squid fishery, which represents nearly 80% of the worldwide cephalopod catches, octopuses and cuttlefishes represent ∼10% each. Total reported global production of octopuses ove...

Amphioctopus fangsiao is an important fishery resource in northern coastal China, and there is an interest to develop its commercial cultivation under controlled conditions. In this study, we describe the embryonic development of A. fangsiao from eggs to hatchlings, focusing on the formation of the mantle, eyes and arms. Results indicate that this...

The complete mitochondrial genomes of Harpago chiragra and Lambis lambis (Strombidae) were determined with the size of 15,460 bp and 15,481 bp, respectively, and both sequences contained 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNAs, and two rRNAs. H. chiragra and L. lambis have similar mitochondrial features, corresponding to typical gastropod mitochondrial g...

In this study, we determined the O. minor diet preferences, the time of consumption diets and the prey strategies for three diets. Besides, we showed by field and laboratory observations that in this species, lair structure and lairing behaviors were recorded and described in detail. 1.Octopus minor prefers to prey crustaceans with varied strategie...

The common long-armed octopus, Octopus minor, is an important component of systems and supports the local fisheries in the coastal areas of northern China. And because of the overfishing, the national germplasm reserve was established as conservation area at the Moon Lake for the genetic resource of O.minor in 2012. For the fishery management and a...

Similar morphological characters and little molecular data of Amphioctopus rex, A. neglectus and A. cf. ovulum resulted in their unknown phylogenetic statuses and equivocal relationships. In this study, the complete mitochondrial genomes of these three species collected in Chinese waters were sequenced and compared with each other to clarify the re...

Octopus minor is widely distributed along the northern coast of China. To date, there is little information on the prey selection process of this species. To understand this process, several experiments were carried out. Three types of bivalves, namely, Ruditapes philippinarum, Mactra chinensis, and Mytilus edulis, were used to observe the prey sel...

Rochia nilotica is a common marine gastropod species in family Tegulidae. At present, less molecular information of genus Rochia was reported. In the present study, we first determined the complete mitochondrial genome of R. nilotica. The mitochondrial sequence was 16,966 bp in length and encoded for 35 metazoan mitochondrial genes, including 13 pr...

To provide markers to identify chromosomes in the genome of octopods, chromosomes of three octopus species were subjected to NOR/C-banding. In addition, we examined their genome size ( C value) to submit it to the Animal Genome Size Database. Silver staining revealed that the number of Ag-nucleoli was 2 ( Octopusminor (Sasaki, 1920)), 2 ( Amphiocto...

Under the temperature of seawater of 17.2-20.8 o C, Octopus minor [initial wet weight (127.27±12.19)g, initial mantle length (67.23 ± 6.12) mm] were starved at different durations (0, 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15d). After the starvation treatment, O. minor was re-fed for 15 days to study the effects of starvation duration and re-feeding on the growth and th...

Octopus minor (Sasaki, 1920) is an important economic fishery resource in China. In order to explore the stock information and the phylogeographic status of O. minor, mitochondrial DNA cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI, 565 bp) and 16S rRNA (493 bp) genes were amplified from 11 different sampling locations. Genetic diversity evaluated by haplotyp...

High paralarvae mortality is a major bottleneck currently hindering the control over the lifecycle of common octopus (Octopus vulgaris Cuvier, 1797). It is believed that this problem might be related to either zoo-technical and/or nutritional aspects. The present paper is focused on the study of different zoo-technical aspects related to light cond...

Karyotype analysis was carried out on gill cells of three species of octopods using a conventional air-drying method. The karyotype results showed that all the three species have the same diploid chromosome number, 2n=60, but with different karyograms as 2n=38M+6SM+8ST+8T, FN (fundamental number)=104 (Cistopus chinensis Zheng et al., 2012), 2n=42M+...

Chromosome relative length, supplemental formulae

In this study, the complete mitochondrial genome of Amphioctopus marginatus (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae) was sequenced. The length of A. marginatus was 15,719 base pairs (bp) and the composition of genome is A (41.74%), T (33.53%), C (16.77%), and G (7.96%). The whole mitogenome was composed of 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 2 ribosomal RNA genes, 2...

This study represents the first comprehensive molecular assessment of northwestern Pacific molluscs. In total, 2801 DNA barcodes belonging to 569 species from China, Japan and Korea were analyzed. An overlap between intra- and interspecific genetic distances was present in 71 species. We tested the efficacy of this library by simulating a sequence-...

Cryptic species are common in the ocean, particularly among marine invertebrates such as octopuses. Delineating cryptic species is particularly problematic in octopus taxonomy where the plasticity recorded among taxonomic characters often results in low resolution at the species level. This study investigated the morphological relationships among s...

Octopus minor is widely distributed along the coastal areas of the west Pacific Ocean. This paper investigates spermatozoa, spermiogenesis from the testes, and spermatophores using light and electron microscopy. Mature spermatozoa are about 650 µm long. The head includes mainly the acrosome and nucleus. The acrosome consists of a striated cone surr...

Octopus minor (Sasaki, 1920) is a commercially important cephalopod in Chinese waters. To provide a theoretical basis for resource protection and sustainable management, we investigated genetic structure of ten O. minor populations in Chinese waters using microsatellite DNA markers. Eight microsatellite loci revealed high allelic diversity with 11–...

In this paper, the circular mitochondrial genome of Amphioctopus aegina (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae) was sequenced. The whole mitogenome of A. aegina was 15 545 base pairs (bp) in length with a base composition of 42.53% A, 33.26% T, 16.70% C, and 7.51% G. The complete mitogenome contained 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 2 ribosomal RNA genes, 22 tra...

Octopus minor (Sasaki, 1920) is an economically important cephalopod that is found in the northern coastal waters of China. In this study, we investigated genetic differentiation in fishery populations using amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs). A total of 150 individuals were collected from five locations: Dalian (DL), Yantai (YT), Qing...

Little information exists on the gonadal development and maturity scale of Octopus ocellatus, an economically important octopus species commonly found in the west Pacific Ocean. A total of 171 O. ocellatus samples were collected monthly off the coast of northeast China (Qingdao, Shandong) from December 2011 to November 2012. Total body weight, mant...

Abstract In this paper, we determined the complete mitochondrial genome of Octopus conispadiceus (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae). The whole mitogenome of O. conispadiceus is 16,027 basepairs (bp) in length with a base composition of 41.4% A, 34.8% T, 16.1% C, 7.7% G and contains 13 protein-coding genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, and...

Octopus minor (Sasaki 1920) is widely distributed along the coastal waters of China, Korean Peninsula, as well as south of Sakhalien to Japan. As an important economic cephalopod, culture of O. minor has been attempted in recent years. After capture and broodstock acclimatization to captivity, spawning induction and mating, eggs are spawned at the...

The spineless cuttlefish Sepiella japonica has been cultured in China in recent years. After acclimatization to captivity, spawning induction and mating of the broodstock, the females lay eggs attaching to the artificial substratum. Seawater temperature and salinity of hatching are 20-26∈°C and 25.0-32.0 psu, respectively. The hatching period lasts...

In the present study, we determined the complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences of two species of Cistopus, namely C. chinensis and C. taiwanicus, and conducted a comparative mt genome analysis across the class Cephalopoda. The mtDNA length of C. chinensis and C. taiwanicus are 15706 and 15793 nucleotides with an AT content of 76.21% and 76.5%...

Amphioctopus fangsiao is a commercially important and potential species located in the waters of China. In this survey, the first set of 12 polymorphic microsatellite loci for A. fangsiao was developed and characterized. The number of alleles ranged from 2 to 16 per locus and the observed and expected heterozygosities varied from 0.200 to 0.966 and...

Owing to their codominant, multiallelic, and highly polymorphic nature, microsatellite markers have been used widely in population genetics and biological resource conservation studies. To investigate the genetic structure of Sepioteuthis lessoniana, we developed 24 microsatellite DNA markers and assessed the polymorphism of each locus in a wild S....

Background: The marginal seas of northwestern Pacific are characterized by unique topography and intricate hydrology. Two hypotheses have been proposed to explain genetic patterns of marine species inhabiting the region: the historical glaciations hypothesis suggests population genetic divergence between sea basins, whereas the Changjiang River ou...

Pairwise ΦST based on ITS-1 (below diagonal) and associated P values (above diagonal) among the 12 populations (see Table 1 for abbreviations). Values in bold indicate significant P values after Bonferroni correction (n = 1000, P < 0.05). (DOC)

Present genetic patterns of marine organisms not only result from historical and contemporary ecological factors, but also from anthropogenic activities. Disentangling the relative effects of these factors can provide valuable insights into management and protection of exploitable species. The commercially important marine clam Tegillarca granosa i...

DNA barcoding provides an efficient method for species-level identifications. In this study, we have amplified partial sequences of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene from 110 specimens of 45 species of Caenogastropoda collected from the coast along China to evaluate whether DNA barcodes can distinguish these species accurately. The av...

Coleoids are part of the Cephalopoda class, which occupy an important position in most oceans both at an ecological level and at a commercial level. Nevertheless, some coleoid species are difficult to distinguish with traditional morphological identification in cases when specimens are heavily damaged during collection or when closely related taxa...

Cistopus chinensis sp. nov. is a small benthic octopod. The primary diagnostic character for the genus Cistopus is the possession of eight mucous pouches set in the oral surface of the webs, with one located between each of the arm bases. This study describes the morphological characters of Cistopus chinensis sp. nov. from the East China Sea and th...