CreatureCast – Diving for Jellies

Here in the Dunn lab, siphonophores are our favorite animal and the focus of much of our research.

Dr. Phil Pugh is a good friend of the lab, and he also happens to have described more new species of siphonophores than anyone who has ever lived. In the video below, he describes what it's like to come across a siphonophore in the deep sea with a submarine. What looks like one long body in this video is actually a free-swimming colony of clones — many genetically identical bodies that are all attached. But each body in the group isn't just like its neighbor. They each do a specific job for the colony. Some individuals will swim, some will catch food, and some will reproduce.

More on siphonophore biology can be found in papers here and here. But we'll talk about all that later — for now, just take a look.

CreatureCast - Footage From The Deep from Casey Dunn on Vimeo.

Footage courtesy of the Bioluminescence lab at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Music graciously provided by Raf Spielman of The Golden Hours. This podcast is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 license.

--Sophia Tintori

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CreatureCast – Diving for Jellies

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