Most fecund octopus

The most fecund species of octopus is the larger Pacific striped octopus, known only from a few areas off coastal Nicaragua, and, despite having been discovered in the 1970s, still awaiting a formal scientific description and name. Whereas most octopus species reproduce only once, the females laying a single brood of eggs, after which they enter a period of senescence before dying, females of this species can mate and gestate many times throughout their lives, laying and hatching multiple egg broods continuously.

It remains unclear why only this particular octopus species (plus, to a lesser extent, one other, closely related species) produces multiple egg broods. One theory is that it obviously increases the likelihood of survival for a given female's offspring – the more she produces, and staggered over a period of time rather than all at once, the more likely it is that some will survive. Yet if this modus operandi is really so advantageous, other octopuses would surely have evolved a comparable reproductive strategy.