A thick bloom of jellyfish of varying hues drifts in the turquoise waters of Aragua in Venezuela, a surreal vision attributed to climate change that has decimated fishing stocks.
Ecology
Apr 8, 2024
0
3
Their dragon-like appearance has earned lobsters the moniker "dragons of the sea." It is one reason why they are a favorite fixture during Lunar New Year banquets. The Chinese call them longxia or dragon shrimps. And in some ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 29, 2024
3
127
Jellyfish can't do much besides swim, sting, eat, and breed. They don't even have brains. Yet, these simple creatures can easily journey to the depths of the oceans in a way that humans, despite all our sophistication, cannot.
Biotechnology
Feb 28, 2024
0
84
In the dark and cold of the months-long polar night, food resources are limited. Some groups of marine organisms in the polar regions overcome this challenge by going into a metabolic resting state in winter, surviving on ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 14, 2024
0
91
At about the size of a pinkie nail, the jellyfish species Cladonema can regenerate an amputated tentacle in two to three days—but how? Regenerating functional tissue across species, including salamanders and insects, relies ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 22, 2023
0
76
The deep sea is home to one of the world's largest communities of animals about which we still know very little. Yet it is already subject to a growing number of human-induced environmental pressures. How do its inhabitants ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 21, 2023
0
57
Ding! The courier hands me an unassuming brown box with "live animals" plastered on the side. I begin carefully unboxing. The cardboard exterior gives way to a white polystyrene clamshell, cloistering a pearly sphere-shaped, ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 2, 2023
0
13
The brain is an evolutionary marvel. By shifting the control of sensing and behavior to this central organ, animals (including us) are able to flexibly respond and flourish in unpredictable environments. One skill above all—learning—has ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 2, 2023
0
4
While scuba diving off the south-west coast of England this summer, I was lucky to encounter several different species of jellyfish in just a matter of weeks. Many of these, including the compass jellyfish (Chrysaora hysoscella), ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 26, 2023
0
17
Invasive species are a real problem in Canada, and one species in particular, the freshwater jellyfish species of the genus Craspedacusta sowerbii—C. sowerbii, or the peach blossom jellyfish—are as widespread as they ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 22, 2023
0
119
Stauromedusae Coronatae Semaeostomeae Rhizostomae
Jellyfish (also known as jellies or sea jellies) are free-swimming members of the phylum Cnidaria. They have several different morphologies that represent several different cnidarian classes including the Scyphozoa (over 200 species), Staurozoa (about 50 species), Cubozoa (about 20 species), and Hydrozoa (about 1000-1500 species that make jellyfish and many more that do not). The jellyfish in these groups are also called, respectively, scyphomedusae, stauromedusae, cubomedusae, and hydromedusae; medusa is another word for jellyfish. (Medusa is also the word for jellyfish in Modern Greek, Finnish, Portuguese, Romanian, Hebrew, Serbian, Croatian, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Lithuanian, Czech, Slovak, Russian, Bulgarian and Catalan).[citation needed]
Jellyfish are found in every ocean, from the surface to the deep sea.[citation needed] Some hydrozoan jellyfish, or hydromedusae, are also found in fresh water and are less than half an inch in size. They are partially white and clear and do not sting. This article focuses on scyphomedusae. These are the large, often colorful, jellyfish that are common in coastal zones worldwide.
In its broadest sense, the term jellyfish also generally refers to members of the phylum Ctenophora. Although not closely related to cnidarian jellyfish, ctenophores are also free-swimming planktonic carnivores, are generally transparent or translucent, and exist in shallow to deep portions of all the world's oceans.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
