''Austrorossia australis'', often called the big bottom bobtail squid, is a species of

bobtail squid Bobtail squid (order Sepiolida) are a group of cephalopods closely related to cuttlefish. Bobtail squid tend to have a rounder mantle than cuttlefish and have no cuttlebone. They have eight suckered arms and two tentacles and are generally qui ...

in the family

Sepiolidae Sepiolidae is a family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its me ...

. This species lives in sandy and muddy environments from 131 to 665 meters deep, in waters away from South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, and Queensland.

Description and spawning

Its coloring is

pinkish Pink colors are usually light or desaturated shades of reds, roses, and magentas which are created on computer and television screens using the RGB color model and in printing with the CMYK color model. As such, it is an arbitrary classificati ...

to a purple brown coloring, the dorsal mantle is not fused with the head, and it has fins that are wide and short. It has a length of 3.4 cm for males, and 6.3 for females. Female ''A. australis'' lay their

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...

s in small clusters and then leave them unattended, and they may spawn several times in a year.

Conservation

Its only threat is its being harvested, and it has minor fishery interests. It has no need for any conservation measures, and has been placed as "

Least Concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...

" by the

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2035021 Molluscs described in 1918 Cephalopods of Australia Taxa named by Samuel Stillman Berry