Egea inermis

Arms

• Arms I and II of large males with modified tips with abruptly much smaller suckers arranged in four series.
• Arms III of large females with terminal photophores.

Figure. E. inermis, oral views of the modified arm tips of a large male and a large female. Drawings from N. Voss, 1974 (p. 944, Figs. 2a, 2d, 2e).

Tentacles

• Tentacular club with suckers only.
• Tentacular club without carpal cluster.
• Two series of suckers and pads on distal 3/4 of tentacular stalk.

Figure. E. inermis, male, 198 mm ML. Oral view of the tentacle. Drawing from Voss, 1974 (p. 943, Fig. 1b).

Funnel

• Valve present (this is unusual amongst the Taoniinae – only shared with Megalocranchia).
• Funnel organ with inverted V-shaped ventral pads and triangular flaps on dorsal organ.

Figure. Ventral view of funnel organ and funnel valve of E. inermis, subadult male, 207 mm ML. Drawing from Voss (1980, p. 397).

Mantle

• Tubercles absent from point of funnel-mantle fusion.

Fins

• Anterior third or more of fin attaches to mantle.

Photophores

• Two ocular photophores: medial organ with narrow, crescent-shaped photogenetic region; lateral organ with narrow S-shaped photogenetic region and encircling 2/3 of lens.
• Photophores on tips of arms III in subadults; adults unknown.

Figure. Lateral and lateroventral views of ocular photophores of E. inermis, subadult male, 207 mm ML. Drawings from Voss (1980, p. 397).

Egea inermis is distributed circumglobally in tropical waters, and extends into the Gulf of Mexico, the western North Atlantic in the Gulf Stream system and in the northwestern Pacific in the Kuroshio System (Voss, 1980).  More recent advances in cephalopod paralarvae distributions have identified E. inermis off the Brazilian coast (Ortiz de Ortiz, et al (2024) which, although encompassed in “tropical waters”, is the first time this species has been formally identified in this region.   

Voss (1974) compares depth ranges of caught Egea specimens and concludes that, regardless of time of day, Egea can most frequently be found between 50-250 meters depth; however, their samples from this study were almost entirely paralarvae.  This information was further updated in Voss (1980), which summarized that mature squid could likely be found up to depths of 2000 meters.      

 

Figure. Top - Dorsal view of paralarva of E. inermis, ca. 7 mm ML. Bottom - Ventral view of a juvenile of E. inermis, ca 48 mm ML. Drawings from Voss (1980, p. 397).

Egea inermis Joubin, 1933

Teuthowenia elongata (Sasaki, 1929)

Phasmatopsis lucifer (Voss, 1963)

Egea elongata (Imber, 1978)