About fragile deep-sea jellies living in the ocean midwater

Amazing stuff! What little we still know about what is going on in our oceans!

"The ocean’s midwater is considered to be the largest habitable space for life on earth, yet it is also one of the most minimally explored marine environments. Collecting specimens in this region is incredibly challenging, as many open ocean species are quick, fragile, and small. Keeping a midwater animal alive for study at the surface is a difficult task due to changes in pressure or damage that may occur during collection. ..."

"... But two new imaging systems developed by a team at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California promise to make these intangible creatures tangible at last. The systems, called DeepPIV and EyeRIS, create 3D renderings of gelatinous deep-sea creatures. Together, they can capture an animal’s every feature on a millimeter scale—the structure of internal organs, even food moving through its digestive tract. The MBARI team believes the scans will help researchers describe these fragile species for the first time and perhaps even reduce the time between the first discovery of a creature and its formal introduction to science—which a 2012 study calculated takes an average of 21 years. ..."

From the abstract:

"... However, the phylum Ctenophora (comb jellies) has historically been difficult to study due to divergent mitochondrial sequences and the corresponding inability to amplify COI with degenerate and standard COI “barcoding” primers. As a result, there are very few COI sequences available for ctenophores, despite over 200 described species in the phylum. Here, we designed new primers and amplified the COI fragment from members of all major groups of ctenophores, including many undescribed species.
Phylogenetic analyses of the resulting COI sequences revealed high diversity within many groups that was not evident from more conserved 18S rDNA sequences, in particular among the Lobata (Ctenophora; Tentaculata; Lobata). The COI phylogenetic results also revealed unexpected community structure within the genus Bolinopsis, suggested new species within the genus Bathocyroe, and supported the ecological and morphological differences of some species such as Lampocteis cruentiventer and similar undescribed lobates (Lampocteis sp. “V” stratified by depth, and “A” differentiated by colour). ..."

The cameras that capture fragile deep-sea jellies in their element | MIT Technology Review The detailed 3D models they make possible could be all that’s needed to describe a new species

Genetic probes give new clues about the stunning diversity of comb jellies

The future of ocean midwater exploration

Hidden diversity of Ctenophora revealed by new mitochondrial COI primers and sequences (open access)

MBARI researchers prepared a “tree” of relationships using COI sequences to show species differences between comb jellies. They used this tree to help other researchers determine which DNA primers would work best for a group of interest. Major branches include the lobed comb jellies (pink), beroids (blue), and the seafloor-dwelling platyctenes (green)