A jellyfish only spends part of its life as the pulsating, tentacled creature we are familiar with. Like a caterpillar that metamorphoses into a butterfly, the jellyfish has an initial life stage called the polyp that looks similar to the sedentary anemones that live on the seafloor. It turns out that in captivity these critters stubbornly remain stuck in the initial life stage. For a scientist who’s interested in the last stage of life, this poses a bit of a problem.
A Smithsonian jellyfish biologist grew frustrated over the inability to study jellyfish in her lab. And so she rolled up her sleeves and dove into the scientific literature to figure out how to make the polyp transform.
Spoiler! It was a success.
“Now, rather than traveling halfway around the globe, scientists can add a couple drops of a special compound to their polyp tank, and have jellyfish to study in under a week! I hope this work will be helpful to many different kinds of jelly-lovers, form biologists to aquarists and beyond.” – Rebecca R. Helm
Here’s the really cool part about the life cycle.
Look at that pic up there. Each polyp develops into multiple jellyfish.
The adult jellyfish release eggs and sperm into the water column, which fertilizes the eggs, and the eggs develop into polyps that fasten onto rocks like sea anemones. They act like sea anemones for awhile, then they develop a jellyfish ‘hat’ that eventually breaks off into a small jellyfish, and they make more hats for awhile until the polyp eventually dies. Off the top of my head, I think it can be up to 5 jellyfish per polyp?
New Research Reveals How to Easily Grow Jellyfish In Captivity
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