Abstract

This paper presents the results of the effects of food type on reproductive performance of O. maya. To this end, 60 wild females were fed with four combinations of food (crab, crab - squid, crab - mussels and crab-fish head). The females were kept in the area of maturity for an average of 30 days until spawning. The eggs were placed in an incubation system where they remained 50 days to hatch. The results did not show significant differences (p > 0.05) in the number of eggs produced per spawn. However, we found that diet crab and crab - mussels averaged respectively 130 and 125 offspring did not survive the day after hatching. While the diet crab - squid and crab-fish heads newly hatched octopuses showed increased resistance with an average of 32 and 7 dead octopuses respectively. The weight of the octopus at birth also showed differences with respect to feeding treatments. These results are discussed in relation to the nutritional intake of the different experimental diets and their impact on the quality of their progeny.