Marine Invertebrate Physiology and Ecology

Cnidarians—the group encompassing jellyfish, corals, sea anemones, and their relatives—occupy a pivotal position in animal evolution as some of the earliest animals to develop organized tissues, rudimentary nervous systems, and complex developmental signaling pathways like Wnt. Researchers study their genomic architecture, stem cell populations, and neural organization to understand how these features arose in the common ancestors of all animals, with cnidarians serving as living reference points for reconstructing deep metazoan history. At the same time, practical urgency comes from jellyfish blooms, which are intensifying in many coastal ecosystems and disrupting fisheries, tourism, and power infrastructure in ways that are still poorly predicted. Open questions center on how ancient and conserved the molecular toolkit for nervous system development really is, and on what genomic or ecological conditions tip a jellyfish population from background presence into a large-scale bloom.

Works

129,182

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408,777

Keywords

Cnidarian EvolutionJellyfish BloomsGenomic OrganizationNeural SystemsWnt SignalingStem Cells