Mollusk of the Year 2025!

For a few years now, the Senckenberg Museum Frankfurt and Unitas Malacologica have been promoting the election of “Mollusks of the Year.” The endeavor is non-discriminatory: Anyone can nominate their favorite species, from any geographic area. Species from marine, land, and freshwater environments are eligible. The selection takes place in March every year, and the Senckenberg will sequence the complete genome (the entire DNA, comprising all genetic information) of the selected species.

Muusoctopus species. Photo: Schmidt Ocean Institute

This year’s selection (released yesterday, April 3, 2025) is an unnamed species of deep-sea octopus in the genus Muusoctopus, informally known as the Dorado Octopus. Read this excerpt from the Senckenberg website: “The genus Muusoctopus includes octopuses that live in the icy depths of the oceans. One of the ways they differ from their shallow-water relatives is their lack of an ink bladder – an adaptation to the darkness of the deep sea where few predators lurk. It was only recently discovered that a Muusoctopus species, the “Dorado Octopus,” forms huge colonies at a depth of around 3,000 meters off the coast of Costa Rica. The females of this species appear to incubate their eggs exclusively in the warm waters of hydrothermal vents – an extraordinary behavior that is revolutionizing our understanding of deep-sea ecology, reproduction, and evolution.”

Muusoctopus species were presented in this blog three times in the past: "The Octopus Garden" in 2019, "A Cool Deep-sea Octopus" in 2020, and "The New Octopus Garden" in 2023. Long live Muusoctopus!

For more on this year’s selection and the other four nominees check here.

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