Right this moment is World Jellyfish Day, and we on the Cnidaria and Ctenophora crew have ready for the event a poster that includes a number of the beauties we now have collected throughout the latest years within the context of our Artsdatabanken and EU MSCA tasks.
Completely happy World Jellyfish Day everybody!
A glimpse of jellyfish range to rejoice World Jellyfish Day together with 38 species from the North Sea, Norwegian Sea, Arctic Ocean and Southern Ocean. Pictures: Joan J. Soto Angel
Jellyfish are usually related to nuisance and ache, and infrequently thought-about a plague that’s taking on the oceans, diminishing its assets, hindering industrial operations, and making seashores much less enticing for vacationers. Nonetheless, jellyfish aren’t solely an integral a part of wholesome pelagic ecosystems, but additionally key gamers in planktonic communities. Till just lately, their fragile and mushy our bodies had obscured our information on their true abundance and key function in ocean ecosystems, as common sampling strategies are inclined to overlook them, giving the misunderstanding that they’re ecologically irrelevant. Nonetheless, latest proof have proven that they’re an essential a part of the common eating regimen for a lot of fishes and invertebrates, each whereas swimming within the water column, and as soon as their remnants fall to the seafloor, transferring a major quantity of carbon to the deep sea. Really, jellyfish are the highest predators within the meals internet at planktonic scale, similar to lions within the savanna or nice white sharks and killer whales within the open ocean.
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-Joan, Luis & Aino
(“crew jellyfish”)