Candace McBride

PhD Candidate

Honours (Macquarie University)
Bsc Marine Science (Sydney University)

Department of Biological Sciences
Macquarie University
Sydney NSW 2109
Australia

Ph : +61 2 9850 9269
Fax: +61 2 9850 8245
Email: cmcbride@bio.mq.edu.au

Sepia plangon

For my honours project I will be investigating the natural history and foraging behaviour of the small Australian cuttlefish species, Sepia plangon . S. plangon , commonly known as the Mourning cuttlefish grows to around 15cm in maximum length and has been observed inhabiting shallow seagrass beds from Jervis Bay , in Southern NSW to the Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia . Currently, little work has been done on the foraging behaviour of any Australian species of cuttlefish. The majority of work that has been done on cuttlefish worldwide has been on the European cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis . Thus, this project is particularly interesting as it will give us some insight into the ecology of Sepia plangon but will also allows us to make comparisons between the ecology and behaviour of Australian and European cuttlefish species.

Initially, I will be generating habitat maps of two sites in Sydney Harbour . Camp Cove has already been completed and it is likely that Parsley Bay will be the second site. I am hoping to determine the habitat commonly used by S. plangon , its home range and whether this species is distributed by size within the habitat or site. Following on from this I will be looking at the diet of this species, through stomach content analysis and manipulative experiments in the laboratory. The last part of my project will investigate the home range of this species on a larger scale. I will be travelling up north later in the year and diving at various sites along the way. At each site I will be collecting tissue samples from individual cuttlefish that will be later analysed in the lab. Hopefully, these samples will give me an indication of the home range of this species outside of Sydney Harbour.