The importance of polyps to understand jellyfish diversity, evolution and blooming potential

MORANDINI, A. C.; STRAEHLER-POHL, I.; SCHIARITI, A.

Barcelona

Simposio; 5th International Jellyfish Bloom Symposium; 2016

To understand the biology and ecology of metagenetic cnidarians, all life cycle stagesmust be considered. Although this statement seems obvious, historically the pelagic stagewas much more studied than the benthic ones; especially considering scyphozoan andcubozoan species. Any environmental factor or biological phenomenon that affects thepolyp populations certainly will have effects on the medusa counterpart, and many of themcan lead to aggregation or blooming episodes. Besides several studies on the subject, we arestill far from a precise answer on which factors can cause blooms, but we are moving towards a better understanding. Polyps are morphologically much simpler than medusae, and such fact makes it hard to define body characters that can be used for identification purposes. But detailed and long-term observations led researchers to find distinctive features, body patterns and reproductive strategies that enable differentiation of taxonomic units among scyphozoans and cubozoans. Furthermore, the recognition of polyps? different characters can help researchers to understand the evolutionary patterns observed in the medusa stage, corroborating, refuting or eventually creating new ideas.