Hi Reed, thank you for the observation!
Aurelia is a genus of scyphozoan jellyfish (Cnidaria, Scyphozoa). There are at least 13 species in the genus Aurelia including many that are still not formally described. It has been suggested that Aurelia is the most well-studied group of gelatinous zooplankton, with Aurelia aurita the most well studied species in the genus; two other species, Aurelia labiata and Aurelia limbata have also been investigated (studies summarized by Arai). Since most previous studies of Aurelia were done without the benefit of genetic identification, one cannot positively attibute the results of most research to the species named. Aurelia spp. can be found in the Atlantic Ocean, the Arctic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, and are common to the waters off California, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Black Sea, Croatia, Indonesia, the East Coast of the United States as well as Europe. Aurelia undergoes alternation of generations, whereby the sexually-reproducing pelagic medusa stage is either male or female, and the benthic polyp stage reproduces asexually.
From Wikipedia,
Regards
nasos k. |
Greece
medusa (3)
ngk (182) |
