Females ultimately determine whether to accept a mating attempt. They reject a large percentage of mating attempts (up to 70%) and sometimes reject large consort males to mate with a small lone male. Females possess a sperm receptacle below the mouth and may use stored sperm from this receptacle or sperm from spermatangia placed in the buccal area to fertilize their eggs. Thus, females may accumulate sperm from consecutive matings and create considerable potential for sperm competition; it is not known if females exert cryptic sperm choice. Individual females can be extremely active on the spawning grounds: in a single day one female was documented to mate 17 times, with 8 different males, and lay 37 eggs in the course of 9 hours.

References

Hall, K. C. and R. T. Hanlon. 2002. Principal features of the mating system of a large spawning aggregation of the giant Australian cuttlefish Sepia apama (Mollusca : Cephalopoda). Mar Biol 140: 533-545

Hanlon R, T. and J. B. Messenger. 1996. Cephalopod Behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Naud, M. J., R. T. Hanlon, K. C. Hall, P. W. Shaw, and J. N. Havenhand. 2004. Behavioural and genetic assessment of reproductive success in a spawning aggregation of the Australian giant cuttlefish, Sepia apama. Anim Behav 67: 1043-1050