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On the Habitat of Nautilus pompilius in Tañon Strait (Philippines) and the Fiji Islands

Authors:
Shozo Hayasaka
Shozo Hayasaka
Shozo Hayasaka
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Kimihiko Ōki
Kimihiko Ōki
Kimihiko Ōki
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Kazushige Tanabe at The University of Tokyo
Kazushige Tanabe
Toshio Saisho
Toshio Saisho
Toshio Saisho
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Abstract

Since 1981, we have been engaged in field studies of the habitat of Nautilus pompilius in the Philippines (1981 and 1982) and in the Fiji Islands (1982 and 1983) (Hayasaka et al., 1982; Hayasaka, 1983, 1985). The main purpose of these studies was to obtain basic data on the habitat of N. pompilius in the Philippines and in Fiji, which are at opposite ends of the vast distribution range this species. Although the overall project is still in progress, the results of study to date are summarized in this chapter.
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Hayasaka, S., Ōki, K., Tanabe, K., Saisho, T., Shinomiya, A. (2010) On the Habitat of Nautilus pompilius in Tañon
Strait (Philippines) and the Fiji Islands. In: Saunders, W.B., Landman, N.H. (eds) Nautilus. Topics in Geobiology,
vol 6, pp. 179–200. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3299-7_11
Reproduced from Hayasaka et al. (1987) published from Plenum Press, New York.
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... Intraspecific variability can also originate from sexual dimorphism. In the case of Nautilus, males tend to be slightly larger than females with slightly broader adult body chambers (Hayasaka et al., 2010;Saunders & Ward, 2010;Tanabe & Tsukahara, 2010). However, in the juvenile stage, the morphological differences are not very pronounced, thus often hampering sexing. ...
... The results of a series of statistical tests (Table 5; analyses of the residual sum of squares) suggest that the males tend to produce more chambers than females with nearly the same conch diameter. Bearing in mind that mature males are generally larger than mature females in maximum conch diameter (Hayasaka et al., 2010), this may potentially indicate a prolonged life span or less energetic investment in reproduction. By contrast, the addition of another chamber to males could be associated with their sexual maturity; the weight of the large spadix and a large mass of spermatophores in males might necessitate more space and buoyancy. ...
Intraspecific variation of phragmocone chamber volumes throughout ontogeny in the modern nautilid Nautilus and the Jurassic ammonite Normannites
Article
Full-text available
  • Oct 2015
Nautilus remains of great interest to palaeontologists after a long history of actualistic comparisons and speculations on aspects of the palaeoecology of fossil cephalopods, which are otherwise impossible to assess. Although a large amount of work has been dedicated to Nautilus ecology, conch geometry and volumes of shell parts and chambers have been studied less frequently. In addition, although the focus on volumetric analyses for ammonites has been increasing recently with the development of computed tomographic technology, the intraspecific variation of volumetric parameters has never been examined. To investigate the intraspecific variation of the phragmocone chamber volumes throughout ontogeny, 30 specimens of Recent Nautilus pompilius and two Middle Jurassic ammonites (Normannites mitis) were reconstructed using computed tomography and grinding tomography, respectively. Both of the ontogenetic growth trajectories from the two Normannites demonstrate logistic increase. However, a considerable difference in Normannites has been observed between their entire phragmocone volumes (cumulative chamber volumes), in spite of their similar morphology and size. Ontogenetic growth trajectories from Nautilus also show a high variation. Sexual dimorphism appears to contribute significantly to this variation. Finally, covariation between chamber widths and volumes was examined. The results illustrate the strategic difference in chamber construction between Nautilus and Normannites. The former genus persists to construct a certain conch shape, whereas the conch of the latter genus can change its shape flexibly under some constraints.
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... That body growth and shell growth may be decoupled from each other is well known in bivalves and gastropods (55,56). This question has rarely been addressed in Nautilus, though the allometric relationships between body and shell growth during sexual maturation has been reported in Nautilus pompilius (57). In ammonites, the allometric relationships between body and shell growth may be manifested by sometimes considerable variations in body-chamber length during development (28), which, however, did not prevent these animals from regulating their buoyancy, probably due to a flexibility of the mechanisms of buoyancy regulation, as in Nautilus (58). ...
The physical basis of mollusk shell chiral coiling
Article
  • Nov 2021
Significance A theoretical model suggests that a mechanically induced twist of the soft body underlies the formation of helicospiral shells in snails and ammonites and also accounts for the startling and unique meandering shells observed in certain species. This theory addresses fundamental developmental issues of chirality and symmetry breaking: in the case of ammonites, how a bilaterally symmetric body can sometimes secrete a nonsymmetric shell; for gastropods, how an intrinsic twist possibly due to the asymmetric development of musculature can provide a mechanical motor for generating a chiral shell. Our model highlights the importance of physical forces in biological development and sheds light on shell coiling in snails, which have been used for a century as model organisms in genetic research.
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On the Biology, Behavior, and Conservation of the Chambered Nautilus, Nautilus sp.
Thesis
Full-text available
  • Oct 2015
Chambered nautiluses are unique molluscs that differ from their closest relatives, octopus, squid, and cuttlefish, in many ways. Most obvious, nautiluses possess the ancestral trait of an external shell; a shell that has protected them for hundreds of millions of year but is dooming them today. Although nautiloids have survived all five mass extinction events, the lineage is under siege in the current ‘sixth mass extinction’. Unregulated, unmanaged, and ongoing nautilus fisheries, particularly in the Philippines and Indonesia, have been depleting populations in a matter of years, some to local extinction, to supply a worldwide demand for the ornamental shell. Although nautiluses are heavily fished and common in the shell trade, there is a considerable lack of information on their biology, ecology, and behaviors. Thus, at this point, we do not have enough basic information about nautiluses to propose management plans and conservation practices. Here, we investigate three aspects of nautilus life history as it relates to conservation by combining laboratory and field studies: navigational tactics, feeding behaviors, and population demography. Nautiluses learn and remember visual cues to find a goal using a beacon, or constellation of cues around the goal. However, the contribution of kinesthetic, or route memory, as they navigate to the goal, is unknown. Here, we tested the nautiluses’ ability to navigate a maze by shifting or removing a visual beacon cue used to identify the goal. We found that after learning that a beacon cued a goal in a spatial maze, nautiluses switched to route memory to find the goal when the beacon was removed. However, this switch was difficult for them. Nautiluses tested with a shifted beacon, 45° relative to the goal, ignored their route memory to orient toward the beacon instead. Only when the beacon was shifted 90° from the learned location, or was removed entirely, did the animals seem to switch to route memory. Thus, it appears that during learning, the beacon overshadows the acquisition of route memory. However, as animals were successful in finding the goal when the beacon was removed, overshadowing was not complete – nautiluses were able to access route memory when the beacon was removed entirely. Thus, nautiluses exhibit behaviors that indicate they are adapted for an environment with cues that may shift or become unreliable. Most cephalopods are active predators that rely on a suite of different behaviors to capture live prey. Nautiluses have been characterized as predators, scavengers, and opportunistic scavengers, among other terms. However, no direct evidence has been available to confirm these claims. Here, we used field and laboratory observations to describe what type of prey nautiluses prefer (dead or live) and how they locate and capture prey items. In the field, baited remote underwater video systems (BRUVS) were deployed at four different sites in the South Pacific to depths of 300-400m to record feeding behavior of wild Nautilus. In the laboratory, a mock setup of nautilus habitat was used to test and record the nautiluses’ ability to locate and capture dead, and sometimes buried, shrimp. In both settings, the nautiluses exhibited the same foraging behaviors. Remote tracking of the food source was characterized by the cone of search behavior with tentacles extended outward and laterally. Field observations suggested that nautiluses may dig for prey items and laboratory experiments confirmed this ability. Nautiluses were able to locate prey from a distance and then excavate buried prey items. An unexpected result here was that nautiluses showed no foraging or predatory behaviors toward live prey items in the field which suggests that nautiluses may only forage on decaying prey. The foraging and digging behaviors appear to be fixed action patterns in Nautilus, exhibited in the presence of odor stimuli whether the nautilus consumes the food item or not. This would be an ideal adaptation for an opportunistic forager finding food in a dark environment with limited prey items. However, this adaptation has the secondary effect of leaving nautiluses highly vulnerable to being caught in traps baited with dead prey items. In addition, their digging behavior makes them susceptible to accumulating toxins in the sediment that may collect on the ocean floor as a result of increasing coastal development and runoff. The extant species of Nautilus and Allonautilus (Cephalopoda) inhabit fore-reef slope environments across a large geographic area of the tropical western Pacific and eastern Indian Oceans. While many aspects of their biology and behavior are now well-documented, uncertainties concerning their current populations and ecological role in the deeper, fore-reef slope environments remain. Given the historical to present-day presence of nautilus fisheries at various locales across the Pacific and Indian Oceans, a comparative assessment of the current state of nautilus populations is critical to determine whether conservation measures are warranted. We used baited remote underwater video systems (BRUVS) to make quantitative photographic records as a means of estimating population abundance of Nautilus sp, at sites in the Philippines Islands, American Samoa, Fiji and along an approximately 125 km transect on the fore reef slope of the Great Barrier Reef from east of Cairns to east of Lizard Island, Australia. Each site was selected based on its geography, historical nautilus abundance, and the presence (Philippines) or absence (other sites) of Nautilus fisheries. We found significantly fewer nautiluses with this method than expected in the Philippine Islands site. While there may be multiple reasons for this difference, the most parsimonious is that the Philippines Islands population has been reduced due to fishing. Specifically, historical trap records from the same site demonstrate there have been far more nautiluses at this site in the past. Effective conservation plans benefit both the species of interest as well as the community. We identify visual and kinesthetic cues and tactics that are important to nautiluses returning to locations in their habitat (e.g., hiding spots, good foraging), and support the hypothesis that nautiluses are strict scavengers, sometimes reliant on digging in the substrate to find food they have found using olfactory cues. We also report on the health of populations in both fished and unfished sites in the Indo Pacific. There is still work to perform, such as identifying preferred habitat type, preferred species of prey, and calculating abundance levels at different areas and at different times. However, without protection, fisheries will continue to deplete nautiluses to extinction, one population at a time, as the fishermen move to new sites when one site is no longer profitable.
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Early Albian marine environments in Madagascar: An integrated approach based on oxygen, carbon and strontium isotopic data
Article
  • Mar 2016
New palaeotemperature reconstructions have been obtained on the basis of oxygen isotopic analysis of 178 aragonitic shell samples taken from specimens of three ammonoid orders (and some corresponding families): Phylloceratida (Phylloceratidae), Lytoceratida (Tetragonitidae) and Ammonitida (Oppeliidae, Desmoceratidae, Silesitidae, Cleoniceratidae and Douvilleiceratidae). Those obtained from aragonite shells, secreted in the lower epipelagic and in the middle mesopelagic zones during coolest season (winter), range from 15.4 to 16.8˚ C, and from 11.8 to 12.0˚ C, respectively. Presumed spring/autumn palaeotemperatures obtained from aragonite shells, secreted apparently in the upper and lower epipelagic, upper and middle mesopelagic zones, are somewhat higher. Presumed summer palaeotemperatures, calculated apparently for the upper and lower epipelagic, and upper mesopelagic zones range from 19.4 to 21.7˚ C, from 17.7 to 19.4˚ C, and from 14.4 to 16.1˚ C, respectively. The predominant part of investigated ammonoids from Madagascar inhabited the epipelagic zone, but some phylloceratid, tetragonitid and silesitid ammonoids preferred deeper, cooler conditions (upper-middle mesopelagic zone). The study supports the hypothesis that Madagascar was located in middle latitudes within the tropical-subtropical climatic zone during the early Albian. Available carbon and strontium isotope data allow us to assume a more or less expressed carbon and strontium isotope stratification of the water column in this region in the early Albian. On the basis of the stable isotope data, following partly Lukeneder (2015), two large ethological groups can be recognised mainly in mid-aged and adult ammonoids. Some ammonoids (group 1) preferred apparently mesopelagic conditions, and to a lesser degree the epipelagic zone, being mainly cool-requiring animals. However, a significant part of the isotopically investigated ammonoids (group 2) preferred, on the contrary, only epipelagic conditions, being mainly thermophilic dwellers.
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Aturia from the Miocene Paratethys: An exceptional window on nautilid habitat and lifestyle
Article
  • Apr 2011
  • PALAEOGEOGR PALAEOCL
Many examples of drifted Aturia shells in shallow littoral deposits have been reported worldwide, suggesting that the paleobiogeographic distribution of this Cenozoic nautilid could be a mere post-mortem artifact. An exceptional Lower Miocene deposit from the Central Paratethys yields abundant (about 500 specimens) and very well-preserved newly hatched as well as adult shells, associated with upper and lower jaws, representing the first unequivocal case of autochthonous Aturia and one of the most exceptional nautilid deposits reported so far. Oxygen isotope ratios show that Aturia lived like Nautilus, being nektobenthic at all stages of its development. But unlike Nautilus, both newly hatched and adult Aturia lived at the same water depth and temperature (about 240–330 m and 13–17.6 °C) in which the eggs were laid. The dysoxic paleoenvironmental setting in which Aturia occurs in abundance may be interpreted in light of both the capacity of Nautilus to exploit/tolerate oxygen-depleted waters, and the molecular phylogenetic tree of cephalopods, suggesting plesiomorphic physiological traits associated with hypoxia tolerance. Since the last common ancestor of Aturia and Nautilus may be traced back at least into the Jurassic, this sheds new light onto the relative scarcity of Mesozoic and Cenozoic nautilids in well-oxygenated, epicontinental shelf deposits.
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Morphological analysis of Nautilus pompilius. In: Hayasaka, S. (ed.) Marine ecological studies on the habitat of Nautilus pompilius in the environs of Viti Levu, Fiji
Article
Full-text available
  • Jan 1985
Based on the two population samples from the Suva and the Pacific Harbour areas, Viti Levu Island, Fiji Islands, morphological variation and relative growth of soft and hard tissues of Nautilus pompilius were analyzed. In both samples development of gonad begins at the stage of more than 130 mm in shell diameter. Soft tissue, gonad and shell of mature males are usually heavier and larger than those of mature females. Shell form ratios are slightly different between sexes, and most mature males have broader and higher whorl apertural area than females. Morphological comparison of the two samples with that from the Philippines shows a fairly large geographical variation not only in size and weight of the mature animals but also in the nepionic size between the two separated habitats.
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Field study on the habitat of Nautilus in the environs of Cebu and Negros Islands, the Philippines
Article
Full-text available
  • Jan 1982
On the basis of, and as a development of the preliminary survey in 1980, the main work of the present research project, entitled the "Marine Ecological Studies on the Habitats of Nautilus in the Environs of Cebu and Negros Islands, the Philippines" was carried out in 1981 for about a month from 26th August to 26th September, as a joint venture of Japanese and Philippine research workers. In this article the processes and the results of the field study in 1981 are reported with some remarks on the trapped specimens of nautilus pompilius from the area studied.
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Notes on animal weight, cameral fluids, swimming speed, and color polymorphism of the cephalopod Nautilus pompilius in the Fiji Islands
Article
Full-text available
  • Jan 1977
Forty-six specimens of Narrtilus pon~pilius Linnaeus were captured in depths varying between 100 and 500 m outside of the fringing reef near Suva, Fiji Islands. Thirty- right of the specinlens were male. Air weight per individual varied between 347 and 630 g. Sexual dimorphism in size is indicated, since mature shell modifications (approximated septa, blackened aperture) were present in two females weighing about 350 g (soft parts plus shell) and one weighing slightly over 400 g; the sniallest niale showing mature shell mod- ifications weighed 496 g. All newly captured speciniens were heavier than seawater, with mean weight in seawater of 1.87 g determined for twenty-five speciniens. Total volumes of cameral liquid ranged between 13.5 and 0 ml. Thirteen of twenty-five sampled specimens showed less than 1.0 m1 of cameral liquid from all chanibers. Average cameral liquid os- niolarity was lower than that observed in sampled populations of N. mac~omphalris from New Caledonia and N. pompilius from the Philippine Islands. SIaximum swimming rates were 0.25 n~/sec. N. po~npilius exhibits two conlnion color polyrnorphs.
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The reproductive biology of Nautilus pompilius in the Philippines
Article
  • Jan 1977
Records of Nautilus pompilius trapped in the Taon Strait, Negros Oriental, Philippines were kept for a 1 year period from August 1971 through August 1972, and ovaries of mature females collected from August 1971 through March 1972. Females averaged only 8% of the catch during the year of study, but were more abundant in catches from January through May. The male:female ratio was not markedly altered at any depth in the trapping range (61 to 300 m). During the 8 month period, there was no trend apparent in the changes in average size of the ovaries collected; however, oocytes within varied markedly in their maximum weight. Encapsulated spermatophores are stored above the buccal cone on the male, and are attached unencapsulated below the ventral cirri of the female. N. pompilius pairs kept at 80 m remained healthy but laid no eggs from September 1971 through May 1972.
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  • Jan 1901
  • AM NAT
  • 819-837
  • B Dean
Dean, B. 1901, Notes on living Nautilus. American Naturalist, 35, 819-837.
  • Jan 1983
  • 54
  • S Hayasaka
Hayasaka, S. (ed.) 1983. Studies on Nautilus pompilius and its associated fauna from Tañon Strait, the Philippines. Kagoshima University, Research Center for the South Pacific, Occasional Paper, no. 1, 54pp.
Under water TV and still camera work in the habitat of Nautilus off Suva
  • Jan 1985
  • 31-36
  • M Hattori
  • K Tanabe
  • K Ōki
Hattori, M., Tanabe, K. and Ōki, K., 1985. Under water TV and still camera work in the habitat of Nautilus off Suva, Viti Levu, Fiji, In: Hayasaka, S. (ed.) Marine ecological studies on the habitat of Nautilus pompilius in the environs of Viti Levu, Fiji. Kagoshima University, Research Center for the South Pacific, Occasional papers, no. 4, 31-36.