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Comb jelly, Bolinopsis vitrea, is a species of comb jelly in the family Bolinopsidae, It is found in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea,it was first described by the American biologist Louis Agassiz in 1860. In Florida waters, Bolinopsis vitrea is the most common ctenophore Ctenophora comprise a phylum of marine invertebrates, commonly known as comb jellies, that inhabit sea waters worldwide. They are notable for the groups of cilia they use for swimming (commonly referred to as “combs”), and they are the largest animals to swim with the help of cilia. Depending on the species, adult ctenophores range from a few millimeters to 1.5 m in size. Only 100 to 150 species have been validated, and possibly another 25 have not been fully described and named. ctenoforo di vetro
Comb jelly – Ctenoforo di vetro – Bolinopsis vitrea – www.intotheblue.it
Their bodies consist of a mass of jelly, with a layer two cells thick on the outside, and another lining the internal cavity. The phylum has a wide range of body forms, including the egg-shaped cydippids with a pair of retractable tentacles that capture prey, the flat generally combless platyctenids, and the large-mouthed beroids, which prey on other ctenophores. Almost all ctenophores function as predators, taking prey ranging from microscopic larvae and rotifers to the adults of small crustaceans; the exceptions are juveniles of two species, which live as parasites on the salps on which adults of their species feed. Ctenophores are distinguished from all other animals by having colloblasts, which are sticky and adhere to prey, although a few ctenophore species lack them.
Comb jelly – Ctenoforo di vetro – Bolinopsis vitrea – www.intotheblue.it
Like sponges and cnidarians, ctenophores have two main layers of cells that sandwich a middle layer of jelly-like material, which is called the mesoglea in cnidarians and ctenophores; more complex animals have three main cell layers and no intermediate jelly-like layer. Hence ctenophores and cnidarians have traditionally been labelled diploblastic, along with sponges. Both ctenophores and cnidarians have a type of muscle that, in more complex animals, arises from the middle cell layer, and as a result some recent text books classify ctenophores as tripoblastic, while others still regard them as diploblastic. The comb jellies have more than 80 different cell types, exceeding the numbers from other groups like placozoans, sponges, cnidarians, and some deep-branching bilaterians.
Comb jelly – Ctenoforo di vetro – Bolinopsis vitrea – www.intotheblue.it
Ranging from about 1 millimeter to 1.5 in size, ctenophores are the largest non-colonial animals that use cilia (“hairs”) as their main method of locomotion. Most species have eight strips, called comb rows, that run the length of their bodies and bear comb-like bands of cilia, called “ctenes”, stacked along the comb rows so that when the cilia beat, those of each comb touch the comb below.
(extract from Wikipedia)
