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Phylum Ctenophora Comb jelly Lyrics: Shin Kubota, Music and Vocal: Juri Goto |
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Comb jellies are placed in the phylum Ctenophora, and their signature characteristic is the comb plate which shines in rainbow colors as they gracefully swim in the sea. The comb plate is a motor organ bundling cilia together on the plate. It has the largest cilia among the multi-cellular animals. The comb plate looks like a piece of thin cellophane tape which is arranged like meridians on the earth, and they look like combs. Each comb jelly has eight comb plates. A sensory organ is located at the base of the comb plate. It controls the wave-like movement of combs. The comb jelly is hermaphroditic, in other words, it is male as well as female at the same time. Adult comb jellies have various shapes and forms and a group of comb jellies with tentacles have a common characteristic that they look like a cidippid larva. When they grow, however, they do not resemble to the other species at all. Cestida is well known for its unique shape. An adult of the cestida grows to 1 meter long with well-developed muscles. It has a special ability that it can escape quickly from predators by wiggling its flattened body. Beroida looks like a cucumber and lacks tentacles throughout its life. The adult beroida is simply a larger version of the juvenile form. Their prey capturing strategy is very dynamic that they open their mouth very wide like a opened ziplock bag and eat other jellyfish. The comb jelly is diploblastic, and the mouth is also functioned as the anus as well. Its digestive and circulatory systems spread entirely around its body like a network of waterways. Cell cleavage of comb jelly is heart-shaped and it produces mosaic egg. If a developing egg is cut into pieces, each piece will not produce a whole body but only a certain part of the body is produced. Most species of the comb jellies are planktonic. Lobates commonly seen in a bay area is a good representative. The lobata has auricles, bag-like projections to capture preys. Most of the comb jellies are transparent or light milky white, but some are pink, and yet some deep sea dwellers are black or red. Platyctenida, an unusual member of Ctenophora, does not have the comb plates when they mature, and the body shape is flat without gelatinous texture. The platyctenida abandoned the planktonic life and becomes benthic organisms. They may stick to a rock on shallow sea bottom or hide between octocorals. On the surface, the platyctenida may look like a planaria, but a pair of comb shaped tentacles and a sensory organ are the proof that it belongs to Ctenophore. Tentacles are filled with colloblast which are a capturing device. Tip of the colloblast is a sticky body with spring-like filament. Colloblast is an equivalent to the nematocyst of cnidarians, but it has no venom or venomous sting. Many cteonphores are luminous. They emit pale light like a firefly, but only when they are healthy. Comb jellies surprise and confuse their natural predators by suddenly shine in front of them. The luminescence is not for finding an opposite sex for mating as fireflys do. There are about 100 species of comb jellies in the world’s ocean, yet deep sea species are too fragile to collect and preserve samples. As our technology advances, more species of comb jellies will be discovered in the future. |
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Comb jelly, eight rows of rainbow spectrum |
I am sorry.
A song is only Japanese.
Song
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karaoke
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Copyright (C); 2007, Shin Kubota.All Rights Reserved.