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Three Stage Jelly Lifecycle Explains Blooms
- Jelly life cycles include planula larvae, long-lived sessile polyps, and free-swimming medusae that function as the reproductive stage.
- Polyps can clone by splitting or leaving cell 'footprints' that later form new polyps, enabling blooms from one founder.
Jellies Run On A Single Gastrovascular Cavity
- Jellyfish lack complex organs and have a single mouth/anus leading to a gastrovascular cavity that digests and circulates nutrients.
- Their bell is mostly mesoglea (95% water plus collagen), with only two cell layers and sparse wandering cells.
Distributed Neural Clusters Let Jellies Coordinate
- Jelly 'nervous' control is decentralized: sensory-neuron clusters (rhopalia) around the bell margin each process a wedge of the world and coordinate behavior.
- This distributed system acts like a cloud computer, letting the whole animal make decisions collectively.