The overall objective is to make cephalopods readily available as alternative biomedical research models to vertebrates. In Europe and Japan, Octopus has been and continues to be a well- established experimental animal. Recent work in the U.S. has developed reproducible methods for culturing several species in the laboratory. This proposal's aim is to develop a prepared diet that will promote growth and maturation in Octopus spp. While reducing feeding costs associated with live foods. Success in this project would constitute a major advance in cephalopod mollusc culture worldwide, and preliminary experiments indicate it is feasible. Octopuses are active carnivores that use visual, tactile and chemical cues as well as memory during foraging and feeding. To initiate feeding and growth on non-living foods, three general sequential procedures are recognized (1) behavioral conditioning to train animals to seize the items, (2) providing the appropriate chemical and textural cues for biting and ingesting the food, and (3) providing the correct nutritional balance for growth. Specifically, classical conditioning will be used to initiate and evaluate the feeding transition from live to dead to prepared diets. Chemical attractants, textures, palatability and digestibility of various prepared diets will be tested and analysed quantitatively, while the nutritional quality of those diets will be measured by the resultant survival, growth and maturation of octopuses relative to controls reared on normal live diets. The cost/ benefit relationship of using live vs. prepared diets will then be assessed. In the final year, the most successful prepared diets will be tested on squids by using the behavioral techniques and chemical attractants developed for octopuses. Application of these basic science techniques to this pragmatic problem of relying upon costly and incovenient live foods will lead to increases availability of octopuses through enhancement of laboratory culture. Octopuses have anatomical, physiological and behavioral attributes similar to vertebrates; for example, a highly developed nervous system, a complex eye and visual system, a closed circulatory system, short- and long-term memory, and sophisticated intra- and interspecific communication abilities.
