Taxonomic approaches for studying the jellyfish species along the Indian coast and their diversity

Saravanan, Raju (2025) Taxonomic approaches for studying the jellyfish species along the Indian coast and their diversity. In: Course Manual:ICAR Sponsored Short course on Integrated Taxonomic techniques for Marine Biodiversity Conservation. CMFRI Training Manual Series (48). ICAR- Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi, pp. 245-262.

Text CMFRI Training Manual Series No. 48_2025_R Saravanan.pdf Download (5MB)

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.

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