First Record of Box Jellyfish Tripedalia cystophora Conant, 1897 (Cubozoa: Tripedaliidae) from India
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First Record of Box Jellyfish Tripedalia cystophora Conant, 1897 (Cubozoa: Tripedaliidae) from India Abdul Riyas 1 & Appukuttannair Biju Kumar 1 Received: 2 March 2020 / Revised: 25 July 2020 / Accepted: 31 July 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract This study reports the occurrence of box jellyfish Tripedalia cystophora from the brackish water of Kerala, India for the first time. The other reports of this species were from Jamaica, the Philippines, Ecuador, Japan, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Indonesia, Florida, Thailand, Grand Bahama, Seychelles, Comoros, Australia, Hawaii and the Gulf of Mexico. The present study collected four specimens (two each of male and unidentifiable sex) and preserved them in ethanol. The specimens were identified based on their morphological characteristics and the microscopic examination of different types of nematocysts present in their tentacles. Tripedalia cystophora can be easily distinguished from other smaller box jellyfish by the following characteristic features: flattened three pedalia in the four corners of the bell margin, each with single tentacle, numerous nematocysts scattered around the concentric rings in the tentacles, and four prominent frown- shaped rhopalial niches. Keywords Cubozoa. Distribution. Asia. Nematocyst. Tripedaliidae
Introduction Tripedaliidae Conant, 1897 is one of the smallest families among the box jellyfish and includes three species under two different genera (Tripedalia cystophora, Tripedalia binata and Copula sivickisi). Conant detailed the family Tripedaliidae to describe T. cystophora Conant, 1897, collected from Kingston harbour in Jamaica. Later, T. binata from northern Australia was described as the second species in the genus (Moore 1988). One decade ago, the genus Copula was proposed for transferring Carybdea sivickisi Stiasny (1926) which is closely related to T. cystophora (Bentlage et al. 2010). The type taxa for the family and genus of T. cystophora has been lost, and a neotype has to be designated for the species to conserve the name of the taxa (Ekins and Gershwin 2014). Tripedalia cystophora is a small non-fatal cubozoan that commonly inhabits tropical and sub-tropical mangrove ecosystems (Conant 1897; Kramp 1961; Ekins * Appukuttannair Biju Kumar [email protected] 1
Department of Aquatic Biology and Fisheries, University of Kerala, Kariavattom, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala 695581, India
and Gershwin 2014; Lasley et al. 2016). This species is used for experimental studies including feeding behaviour, paternity, sexual selection, and navigation (Nilsson et al. 2005). The sensory system of cubozoans consists of complex lens eyes, and they consequently have good vision (Martin 2004; Nilsson et al. 2005; Kozmik et al. 2008). Tripedalia cystophora perform visually guided hunting and navigation (Hamner et al. 1995; Buskey 2003; Garm et al. 2011). Werner et al. (1971) studied the full life cycle of this box jellyfish and recently Ekins and Gershwin (2014) suggested that T. cystophora should become a species indicator to monit
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