Animal mitochondrial DNAs (mtDNAs) are typically single circular chromosomes, with the exception of those from medusozoan cnidarians (jellyfish and hydroids), which are linear and sometimes fragmented. Most medusozoans have linear monomeric or linear bipartite mitochondrial genomes, but preliminary data have suggested that box jellyfish (cubozoans) have mtDNAs that consist of many linear chromo...

Abstract Jellyfish are important components of the marine ecosystem and present a potential resource for different economic domains (e.g. medicine, food biotechnology). We an overview current state jellyfish biodiversity in Macaronesia region, which includes archipelagos Azores, Madeira, Canary Islands Cape Verde, examine possible biogeography patterns among its archipelagos. Based on comprehen...

Jellyfish have wide distributions throughout the world’s oceans, with new species records emerging from increasingly broad areas as novel identification approaches are implemented, including citizen science. Here, first accounts of Thysanostoma loriferum (Ehrenberg, 1837) and Netrostoma setouchianum (Kishinouye, 1902) in Hong Kong waters reported based on photographs videos collected ...

Some of the strongest empirical support for Lévy search theory has come from telemetry data for the dive patterns of marine predators (sharks, bony fishes, sea turtles and penguins). The dive patterns of the unusually large jellyfish Rhizostoma octopus do, however, sit outside of current Lévy search theory which predicts that a single search strategy is optimal. When searching the water column,...

The swimming beat of scyphozoan medusae can be generated by any one of the marginal ganglia present in the intact animal (Bullock & Horridge, 1965, summarize the data used in this Introduction). This finding of multiple neural units which all perform similar or perhaps even identical functions is relatively common. It raises the question, 'What function is served by the apparent neural redundan...

The endangered leatherback turtle is a large, highly migratory marine predator that inexplicably relies upon a diet of low-energy gelatinous zooplankton. The location of these prey may be predictable at large oceanographic scales, given that leatherback turtles perform long distance migrations (1000s of km) from nesting beaches to high latitude foraging grounds. However, little is known about t...