2010) was applied for COIII distances because there are more Octopus mimus sequences available for this marker in GenBank.
In the latter case, only COI and COIII were used because of the availability of sequences of Octopus mimus in GenBank for those 2 gene regions.
Nonsynonymous substitutions were detected between Octopus hubbsorum and Octopus mimus. A transition at position 475 of the COI sequences resulted in a substitution at the first position of codon 159, with O.
Nucleotide site differences between Octopus hubbsorum and Octopus mimus for each gene are summarized in Tables 3 and 4.
The calculated genetic distances were very similar between Octopus hubbsorum and Octopus mimus (Table 5) using the 3 genes.
3A, B) as well as the Bayesian and parsimony topologies of COI and r16S (Appendices B and C) concurred with the clustering of Octopus hubbsorum, Octopus mimus, and Octopus sp.
Only a transversion in the COIII sequence between Octopus hubbsorum and Octopus mimus was observed, suggesting they are still in a divergent process or they diverged recently.
The distances between Octopus hubbsorum and Octopus mimus were similar to intraspecific divergences calculated for other Octopus sp.
The genetic distances resolved between Octopus mimus and Octopus hubbsorum were significantly less than those reported for other closely related Octopus sp.
In this study, the 10x and 4x rules showed that Octopus hubbsorum and Octopus mimus are not distinct and separate species.
The 4x rule detected that the average distance between Octopus hubbsorum and Octopus mimus clades was less than the intraclade diversity and therefore they could not be considered separate species, but the same species, with differences that might be the result of random drift or population structure.
mimus were too small to make valid size comparisons between males and females.
mimus clutches was 3.8 [+ or -] 0.50 SD, range = 3-4.
mimus produce more than one clutch per year (i.e., oviductal eggs and yolk deposition in progress in the same female).
mimus will need to be examined to obtain further information on the reproductive biology of these two species.
