3. Results and Discussion
The authors recognize that sample sizes for this analysis were small thus population genetics estimates
for these four populations should be considered preliminary. The majority of the eight loci sampled
within the populations were found to be within Hardy Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE) using Genepop 3.1
(when related individuals were excluded from analyses such as in BC) except for Edou11 and Edou216
within both OR and PS and Edou216 within PS. Since these loci were in HWE in the other populations,
and since analysis run without them did not significantly change the results, these two loci were included
in all analyses. Genetic diversity results from GenAlEx were moderate: Number of alleles (A) over all
eight loci was 4.219 (range = 2.875–6.000), average observed heterozygosity (Ho) was 0.445 (range =
0.307–0.515) and average expected heterozygosity (He) was 0.567 (range = 0.506–0.696, Table 1).
The moderate genetic diversity within giant Pacific octopuses measured here fall within the range
measured in microsatellites within other octopuses. Genetic diversity within other octopus species has
been found to range between 0.647 and 0.987 [11,15]. The genetic diversity measured within giant
Pacific octopuses in this study is lower but within the range measured by Touissant et al. (2012) [21]
(Ho range of 0.069 to 0.930 and He range of 0.131–0.968) and is similar to the low end of the range
reported for the common octopus. This is encouraging for giant Pacific octopuses in the Northeast Pacific
as it is legal to harvest them throughout this region yet they do not appear to have suffered a significant
loss of genetic diversity from mortalities associated with the targeted or incidental catch. However the
differences between the diversity found here and that found within Prince William Sound by
Touissant et al. (2012) requires further analysis potentially with larger sample sizes.