New Species of Jellyfish Identified
People have always been fascinated with the mysteries of the oceans. And scientists have devoted a great deal of time, effort and money to fathom what lies in the depths of the waters surrounding our planet. Among the most researched aspects are the underwater lives of jellyfish. To date, around 3000 species of jellyfish have been identified. But now, a new species has been identified which is completely unlike any jellyfish species discovered by science.
Imagine a jellyfish shaped like a flying saucer. Well, in this newly discovered species both male and female are like flying saucers. And to top it all, they have external gonads on their bodies. Gonads are reproductive glands that produce eggs in the female jellyfish and sperm in the male jellyfish. They basically display a reproductive ’skyline’.
These gonads are arranged in a ’crater’ on the top of the jellyfish, right at the center. They basically resemble "skyscrapers in a downtown business district," said Lisa-Ann Gershwin, Curator of Zoology at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston, Australia.
Gershwin, who has named over 160 new species of jellyfish, has named this newly discovered species "medeopolis", which means ’city of gonads’ in Latin.
"It’s just so completely different from anything we’ve ever seen before," said Gershwin—as a matter of fact, the jellyfish has actually created a whole new family and genus, Csiromedusidae and Csiromedusa, respectively.
Both the names, Csiromedusidae and Csiromedusa, honor the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) of Australia, which aided the scientists in their research.
It is interesting to note that Gershwin and her colleagues had actually discovered the ’city of gonads’ jellyfish around eight years back in a part-seawater river in Hobart, on the island of Tasmania in Australia. However, it has taken them all this time to realize that Csiromedusa medeopolis represents a new family of jellyfish.
Unlike a lot of other jellyfish species, the city of gonads is not harmful to humans. At a size of 0.06 inches to 0.08 inches, it is among the smallest jellyfish species - "not the smallest ever known, but it would be pretty close," said Gershwin.
However, Gershwin is at a complete loss when it comes to explaining what use the external gonads can be to a jellyfish. "I’ve thought about this for so long—I have no idea," said Gershwin. "There may be some functional reason, but I can’t see what it is."
And so, research continues into this fascinating new jellyfish.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100506-science-city-of-gonads-jellyfish-new-species/
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