Taxonomy and diversity of jellyfish

Saravanan, Raju (2024) Taxonomy and diversity of jellyfish. In: Training Manual on "Know Your Marine Biodiversity and Environment (MarBiE 2)" Taxonomy of Marine Organisms. CMFRI Training Manual Series (41). ICAR- Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi, pp. 122-136.

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Abstract

Jellyfish is a common term used for any gelatinous animal in marine waters. These include a wide variety of stinging and non-stinging jellyfishes. Jellyfish are the oldest animal on planet Earth, dating from the pre-Cambrian period, and have passed through 500 million years of natural selection. The word "jellyfish" is usually used for a group of jelly-like zooplankton that includes planktonic members of the phylum Ctenophora, Salps and Pyrosomes, and medusae from the phylum Cnidaria (scyophomedusae, hydromedusae, cubomedusae, and siphonohores). The true jellyfish come under the three Cinidarian classes, viz., Hydrozoa, Scyphozoa, and Cubozoa, and seasonally swarm in the coastal waters. Among the three classes, representatives of Scyphozoan and Cubozoan jellyfish range in size from 2 mm to 2 m in bell diameter, however, most of the hydrozoan jellyfish are smaller than 2 mm in bell diameter and belong to the mesoplankton. The biodiversity of pelagic scyphozoan jellyfishes and cubozoan jellyfishes is largely ignored in India, other than a few works in this line. The first work on scyphozoan medusae was published way back in 1930, in which the scyphomedusae of Madras were described with illustrations (Menon, 1930). Subsequent to this publication, the above author has brought out the scyphomedusae of Kurusadai Island (Menon, 1936). These are the two classic works that describe the taxonomic features and distribution of scyphomedusae along the south-east coast of India. Since then, there has been a long gap in the study of scyphomedusae in India. The scyphomedusae available in India were listed as 34 by Chakrapany (1984). The Medusae of the Travancore waters was studied by Nair (1951) and assessed for its impact on fisheries.

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