Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T08:23:46.680Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

In situ observations of Stygiomedusa gigantea in the Gulf of Mexico with a review of its global distribution and habitat

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2010

Mark C. Benfield  and
William M. Graham
Mark C. Benfield*
Affiliation:
Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
William M. Graham
Affiliation:
Dauphin Island Sea Laboratory and University of South Alabama, Dauphin Island, AL 36528, USA
*
Correspondence should be addressed to: M.C. Benfield, Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803, USA email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Four individuals of the large scyphozoan jellyfish Stygiomedusa gigantea were observed in the northern Gulf of Mexico over 2005–2009 by industrial remotely operated vehicles as part of the SERPENT Project. One of these observations included the symbiotic bythitid fish Thalassobathia pelagica. Prior to these observations, neither S. gigantea nor T. pelagica had been observed in, or collected from the Gulf of Mexico. In order to summarize the available information on S. gigantea, we located 110 observations obtained over 110 years (1899–2009) representing 118 individual specimens of this species from around the world. The resulting dataset confirms that this species is cosmopolitan occurring with records from all oceans except the Arctic. While the depth-range of the four Gulf of Mexico specimens was bathypelagic, there appears to be a pattern of S. gigantea occurring in mesopelagic and epipelagic depth-zones at high latitudes, particularly in the Southern Ocean and mesopelagic and bathypelagic depths at mid- and low-latitudes. This pattern may be related to the meridional vertical distribution of temperature or perhaps avoidance of light levels that could degrade porphyrin pigments. There was no evidence that this species migrates vertically. Two of the individuals in the Gulf of Mexico appeared to be actively clinging to subsea structures and we speculate that this is a consequence of its normal mode of feeding, which may entail using its large oral lobes to hold on to, and trap prey.

Keywords

ScyphozoaStygiomedusa giganteaThalassobathia pelagicabehaviourSERPENTremotely operated vehicledistributionabundance
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom , Volume 90 , Special Issue 6: In Honour of Sir Frederick Stratten Russell, FRS , September 2010 , pp. 1079 - 1093
Copyright
Copyright © Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

AMLR (1997) AMLR 1996/97 Field Season Report. Objectives, Accomplishments and Tentative Conclusions. Martin, J. (ed.). United States Antarctic Marine Living Resources Program Report, LJ-97-09. July 1997. 118 pp.Google Scholar
Becker, J.J., Sandwell, D.T., Smith, W.H.F., Braud, J., Binder, B., Depner, J., Fabre, D., Factor, J., Ingalls, S., Kim, S-H., Ladner, R., Marks, K., Nelson, S., Pharaoh, A., Trimmer, R., von Rosenberg, J., Wallace, G. and Weatherall, P. (2009) Global bathymetry and elevation data at 30 arc seconds resolution: SRTM30_PLUS. Marine Geodesy 32, 355–371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borchgrevink, C.E. (1901) First on the Antarctic Continent: being an account of the British Antarctic expedition, 1898–1900. Reprint by McGill-Queen's University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Brodeur, R.D., Decker, M.B., Ciannelli, L., Purcell, J.E., Bond, N.A., Stabeno, P.J., Acuna, E. and Hunt, J.G.L. (2008) Rise and fall of jellyfish in the eastern Bering Sea in relation to climate regime shifts. Progress in Oceanography 77, 103–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Browne, E.T. (1910) Coelenterata V. Medusae. Reports of Scientific Results. National Antarctic Expedition 1901–1904. Natural History (Zoology and Botany) 5, 1–62.Google Scholar
Burd, B.J. and Thompson, R.E. (2000) Distribution and relative importance of jellyfish in a region of hydrothermal venting. Deep-Sea Research I 47, 1703–1721.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colin, S.P., Costello, J.H. and Kordula, H. (2006) Upstream foraging by medusae. Marine Ecology Progress Series 327, 143–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornelius, P.F.S. (1972) The second occurrence of Stygiomedusa fabulosa [Scyphozoa]. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 52, 487–488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornelius, P.F.S. (1973) A taxonomic appraisal of the two species of Stygiomedusa (Coelenterata: Scyphozoa), with the first southern ocean records. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 53, 609–613.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Costello, J.H. and Colin, S.P. (1995) Flow and feeding by swimming scyphomedusae. Marine Biology 124, 399–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dabiri, J.O., Colin, S.P., Costello, J.H. and Gharib, M. (2005) Vortex motion in the ocean: in situ visualization of jellyfish swimming and feeding flows. Physics of Fluids 17, 091108–1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drazen, J.C. and Robison, B.H. (2004) Direct observations of the association between a deep-sea fish and a giant scyphomedusa. Marine and Freshwater Behaviour and Physiology 37, 209–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
EGS-SCAR. (2006) Antarctic pack ice seals (APIS) program. Multi-disciplinary research into the ecology and behavior of Antarctic pack ice seals. Summary update. The Expert Group on Seals (EGS) and Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). http://www.seals.scar.org/pdf/IntAPISSummUpdateRevis.pdf, 25 pp.Google Scholar
Graham, W.M. (2001) Numerical increases and distributional shifts of Chrysaora quinquecirrha (Desor) and Aurelia aurita (Linné) (Cnidaria: Scyphozoa) in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Hydrobiologia 451, 97–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harbison, G.R., Smith, K.L. and Backus, R.H. (1973) Stygiomedusa fabulosa from the North Atlantic: its taxonomy, with a note on its natural history. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 53, 615–617.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herring, P.J. (1972) Porphyrin pigmentation in deep-sea medusae. Nature 238, 276–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jarms, G., Tiemann, H. and Båmstedt, U. (2002) Development and biology of Periphylla periphylla (Scyphozoa: Coronatea) in a Norwegian fjord. Marine Biology 141, 647–657.Google Scholar
Kitamura, M., Miyake, H. and Lindsay, D.J. (2008) Cnidaria. In Fujikura, K., Okutani, T. and Maruyama, T. (eds) Deep-sea life—biological observations using research submersibles. Tokai: Tokai University Press, pp. 295–320.Google Scholar
Kramp, P.L. (1961) Synopsis of the medusae of the world. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 40, 7–469.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kramp, P.L. (1968) The scyphomedusae collected by the Galathea expedition 1950–52. Videnskabelige Meddelelser Dansk Naturhistorisk Forening 131, 67–98.Google Scholar
Larson, R.J. (1986) Biology of the Antarctic Seas 16. Pelagic scyphomedusae (Scyphozoa: Coronatae and Semaeostomeae) of the Southern Ocean. Antarctic Research Series 41, 59–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larson, R.J. (1987) First report of the little-known scyphomedusa Drymonema dalmatinum in the Caribbean Sea, with notes on its biology. Bulletin of Marine Science 40, 437–441.Google Scholar
Leviton, A.D., Gibbs, R.H. Jr, Heal, E. and Dawson, C.E. (1985) Standards in herpetology and ichthyology: part I. Standard symbolic codes for institutional resource collections in herpetology and ichthyology. Copeia 1985, 802–832.Google Scholar
Matsumoto, G.I., Raskoff, K.A. and Lindsay, D.J. (2003) Tiburonia granrojo n. sp., a mesopelagic from the Pacific Ocean representing the type of a new subfamily (class Scyphozoa: order Semaeostomeae: subfamily Tiburoniinae subfam. nov.). Marine Biology 143, 73–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mianzan, H.W. and Cornelius, P.F.S. (1999) Cubomedusae and Scyphomedusae. In Boltovskoy, D. (ed.) South Atlantic zooplankton. Leiden, The Netherlands: Backhuys Publishers, pp. 513–559.Google Scholar
Moore, J.A., Hartel, K.E., Craddock, J.E. and Galbraith, J.K. (2003) An annotated list of deepwater fishes from off the New England region with new area records. Northeastern Naturalist, 10, 159–248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, M.M., Phleger, C.F., Mooney, B.D. and Nichols, P.D. (2000) Lipids of gelatinous Antarctic zooplankton: cnidaria and ctenophora. Lipids 35, 551–559.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pauly, D., Graham, W., Libralato, S., Morissette, L. and Palomares, M.L.D. (2009) Jellyfish in ecosystems, online databases, and ecosystem models. Hydrobiologia 616, 67–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prokofiev, A.M. and Kukuev, E.I. (2008) Comparative characteristics of North Pacific and North Atlantic specimens of a rare bathypelagic fish Thalassobathia pelagica (Teleostei: Bythitidae) with discussion of its distribution. Journal of Tahthyology 48, 565–572.Google Scholar
Purcell, J.E. (2009) Extension of methods for jellyfish and ctenophore trophic ecology to large-scale research. Hydrobiologia 616, 23–50.Google Scholar
Piatkowski, U., Rodhouse, P.G., White, M.G., Bone, D.G. and Symon, C. (1994) Nekton community of the Scotia Sea as sampled by the RMT 25 during austral summer. Marine Ecology Progress Series 112, 13–28.Google Scholar
Raskoff, K.A. (2002) Foraging, prey capture, and gut contents of the mesopelagic narcomedusa Solmissus spp. (Cnidaria: Hydrozoa). Marine Biology 141, 1099–1107.Google Scholar
Repelin, R. (1967) Stygiomedusa stauchi n. sp. scyphomédusae géante des profondeurs. Cahiers O.R.S.T.O.M., série Océanographie 5, 23–28.Google Scholar
Richardson, A.J., Bakun, A., Hays, G.C. and Gibbons, M.J. (2009) The jellyfish joyride: causes, consequences and management responses to a more gelatinous future. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 24, 312–322.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Robison, B.H. (2004) Deep pelagic biology. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 300, 253–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, F.S. (1959) A viviparous deep-sea jellyfish. Nature 4698, 1527–1528.Google Scholar
Russell, F.S. and Rees, W.J. (1960) The viviparous scyphomedusa Stygiomedusa fabulosa Russell. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 39, 303–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torres, J., Burns, J., Denker, C., Daly, K., Ju, S.-J., Friedlaender, A., Zhou, M. and Morin, J. (2002) Report of R/V Laurence M. Gould Cruise LMG02-03 to the Western Antarctic Peninsula 7 April to 21 May 2002. United States Southern Ocean Global Ocean Ecosystems Dynamics Program Report, 5, 65 pp. http://www.ccpo.odu.edu/Research/globec/main_cruises02/lmg0203/lmg02-03rept.pdfGoogle Scholar
Ulrich, W. (1972) Ein drittes exemplar der grossen viviparen tiefseemedusae Stygiomedusa Russ. (Scyphozoa: Semaeostomaea) erbeutet (1962) nordwestlich Island von Dr. Hans Thiele. Sitzungsberichte der Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin N.F. 12, 48–60.Google Scholar
University of Southern California (1965) Studies in Antarctic oceanology. Biological stations occupied by the USNS Eltanin: Data summary, cruises 1–13.Google Scholar
Vinogradov, M.E. and Shushkina, E.A. (2002) Vertical distribution of gelatinous macroplankton in the North Pacific observed by manned submersibles Mir-1 and Mir-2. Journal of Oceanography 58, 295–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar