so then we are free to allow any convention to take hold.

so why not use the multiple different potential pluralities to differentiate between same species, different species, and unknown species? I think the following would be the most intuitive!

Octopuses seems most intuitive and already assumes unknown species (ie used by children who dont even know what a species is)

Octopi sounds similar to a singular entity (no trailing s), so a group from a single species

Octopodes then could explicitly refer to multiple species together, as it changes the spelling a bit and also adds an s

Of course, conventions are not decided upon by a single persons thought process in a random internet forum - so I'm not sure why I wrote this out