Not a Lion's Mane?
I just had one of my species identifications disagreed with. It was surprising, because Lion's Mane Jellies (Cyanea capillata) seemed such an easy one to ID for me. But nooooo!
I've copied @wyattp11 's explanation on a discussion thread from @wendy5 's observation of this jelly. He explains the identification thus: "Just like A. aurita, C. capillata is not cosmopolitan, they are native to the North Sea and parts of the Arctic, perhaps reaching over the pond to Nova Scotia. Recent evidence, both molecular and morphological, suggest much more diversity within Cyanea, for example a separate species was discovered in the White Sea, C. tzetlinii, and Dawson restored C. annaskala and rosea down in Australia. Much more work to be done..."
So fellow jelly identifiers, stay tuned. Perhaps we will soon have a new species we must attribute to our observations.
Comments
A relevant article: https://academic.oup.com/plankt/article/36/1/48/1525108
From the Wikipedia page: The taxonomy of the Cyanea species is not fully agreed upon; some zoologists have suggested that all species within the genus should be treated as one. Two distinct taxa, however, occur together in at least the eastern North Atlantic, with the blue jellyfish (Cyanea lamarckii Péron & Lesueur, 1810) differing in color (blue, not red) and smaller size (10–20 cm diameter, rarely 35 cm). Populations in the western Pacific around Japan are sometimes distinguished as Cyanea nozakii, or as a subspecies, C. c. nozakii. In 2015, Russian researchers announced a possible sister species, Cyanea tzetlinii found in the White Sea, but this has not yet been recognized by other authoritative databases such as WoRMS or ITIS.[4]
Wyattp11 left a comment on Michael's "Lion's Mane" observations: "Well, there were two old names from the Pacific - ferruginea and postelsi but I am not familiar with the references and if they were from this region. So they would have priority, but you guys should start getting close shots of those lines of muscles (coronal) around the subumbrella(underside) and the rhopalia as those are going to be the best characters for ID."
I like his recommendation for how we can better photo document our jelly observations. Now all I need to do is find out what rhopalia means.
This just in from Whattp11: "We should be merging Jellywatch.org into iNat soon, we'll put up a blog post looking for developers to help transition our database over. I think Jellywatch is already a project but I'd hold off adding until we're certain we don't have to rebuild it, plus we're going to include all the Scyphozoan sightings anyways."
Rhopalia (singular: rhopalium) are small sensory structures of Scyphozoa (typical jellyfish) and Cubozoa (box jellies).
Lion's mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata) are named for their showy, trailing tentacles reminiscent of a lion's mane. They can vary greatly in size: although capable of attaining a bell diameter of over 2 metres (6 ft 7 in), those found in lower latitudes are much smaller than their far northern counterparts, with a bell about 50 centimetres (20 in) in diameter.
Size seems to dictate coloration: larger specimens are a vivid crimson to dark purple while smaller specimens grade to a lighter orange or tan, occasionally colorless.
The bell of the lion's mane jellyfish is scalloped into eight lobes (lappets), each lobe containing from 70 to 150 tentacles,[5][6] arranged in four fairly distinct rows. Along the bell margin is a balance organ at each of the eight indentations between the lobes – the rhopalium – which helps the jellyfish orient itself. From the central mouth extend broad frilly oral arms with many stinging cells.[7] Closer to its mouth, its total number of tentacles are around 1200.[8]
The long, thin tentacles which emanate from the bell's subumbrella have been characterised as “extremely sticky”; they also have stinging cells. The tentacles of larger specimens may trail as long as 30 m (100 ft) or more, with the tentacles of the longest known specimen measured at 37 m (120 ft) in length. This unusual length – longer than a blue whale – has earned it the status of one of the longest known animals in the world.[2]
Not only Lion's Main, but other jelly observations are being reviewed and corrected. A Moon Jelly was changed to Greater Moon Jelly by @wyattp11 . He then added this comment:
First, A. aurita is from the North Sea - it is not a cosmopolitan jellyfish with worldwide distribution contrary to popular belief. A. coerulea (formerly known as Aurelia sp. #1 from Japan) does have worldwide distribution and can be found in your area, typically it is confined to warmer harbors and near boats(point of introduction). They have a really hard time surviving outside of these areas because they are subtropical and the west coast life is just too rough for them (when you collect them and drop the temp to ~50F they just melt away).
As for labiata, they tend to range in color from all white morphs to all pink, blue and purple morphs. They are massive, their mesoglea is thick, they can be almost 0.75m wide. When washed up on shore they are usually intact and more rigid in appearance than most other Aurelia, obviously this changes with time as they degrade. Their gonads tend to be thicker, dark/rich in color. They have a very large and conspicuous manubrium that protrudes past the subumbrella(underside) vs. other Aurelia the manubrium is typically flat and conspicuous level with the oral arms or even higher up than the oral arms. Finally, they have a scalloped bell margin so instead of having 8 large lappets, they have 16.
In short, you're almost always seeing A. labiata on the west coast unless you are in an area with a likelihood/possibility of introduction like a harbor or tight inlet, and there are plenty of those along the coast here.
@kurtsteinbach Hey Kurt, I have news! So after doing some digging and carefully reading Kolbasova et al 2015, who discovered a new species of Cyanea in the White Sea, Russia - they considered C. ferruginea as valid and cited a thesis by Sarah Sparmann of UBC where she looked at the genetics of local Cyanea in the Vancouver area vs. other North American Cyanea. I discussed the results with two of the leading jelly taxonomists/evolutionary biologists and they both agreed that ferruginea could be restored based on that evidence. So WoRMs has now been updated with the latest Cyanea species and ferruginea should be our goto species for the Pacific NW until new evidence proves otherwise.
Cheers,
Wyatt
And here is Sarah Sparmann's thesis:
https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0073303
Kolbasova et al 2015:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276501791_A_new_species_of_Cyanea_jellyfish_sympatric_to_C_capillata_in_the_White_Sea
@wyattp11 Wyatt, that's a very welcome update. I'll have to read your links when I have the time to absorb the new info. It confirms the iNaturalist adage that scientific names change from time to time, whereas common names change from location to location. Love it! I'll go back through all this project's observations and update them to reflect your findings. Good work! And thank you very much for remembering us, and sharing your knowledge!
Excellent, thank you for the information.
@aaronbaldwin @paul_norwood a note on the taxonomy of Cyanea - looks like C. ferruginea is the name for us
I just made a number of ids for C. ferruginea in Southeast Alaska, but it occurs to me it might be possible (and advisable) to do a taxon swap for Cyanea capillata -> C. ferruginea based on range, if that seems warranted.
If that is possible, then yes go ahead and flag for that.
I just recently found out about and read Sparmann's MS thesis. It seems that C. ferruginea is a good species and what we see in Washington. But there is another old NE Pacific species retained by Kramp 1961, which is Cyanea postelsi Brandt 1838, collected from the Aleutian Islands. I need to find the Brandt plates.
I was in the Bering Sea in the 1990s looking at a lot of Cyanea "capillata" in the summer on a NOAA fish cruise, and was very surprised that they weren't very big (< 12" diameter) and most were pale mauve or lavendar. What were those? Now it seems that they were probably not C. capillata.
Very cool Claudia! I’ll have to go back and check Kramp, he didn’t list it as ‘doubtful species’ then?
An update for the group... another thesis has surfaced, basically validating all the of the pre-Mayer Cyanea species on the East coast:
https://atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10214/9236/Hotke_Kathryn_201309_MSc.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Andre Morandini also updated WoRMs in December to line up with the Jellyfish Atlas of the World, which recognizes most of the Cyanea species, list still needs to be cleaned up... i.e. C. barkeri is likely a re-description of C. rosea and I think Stiasny's is also a re-desctription I can't remember.. So we can start using these species now. I'll submit a sync request to WoRMS for the genus and try to add a general update for the genus level page.
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