Effects of environmental variability and change on cephalopod populations: an introduction to the CIAC'09 Symposium special issue

This manuscript was produced as an introduction to this publication emanating from CIAC '09, the recent triennial symposium of the Cephalopod International Advisory Council. Given the importance of one of its themes to marine ecosystem science, as stated in the title, it also reviews current understanding of how cephalopod populations interact with and respond to their environment. The coleoid cephalopods have evolved to be pre-eminent ecological opportunists, so in an ocean environment which is changing and predicted to become more variable, these molluscs, which successfully survived the massive environmental change in the Cretaceous–Tertiary Boundary, will be worth watching.