A population of comb jellies in the central Baltic Sea is the first of its kind to be discovered living and reproducing entirely in the larval stage.
Mertensia ovum (pictured) is common in the Arctic. Cornelia Jaspers at the Technical University of Denmark in Charlottenlund and her colleagues discovered thousands of M. ovum jelly larvae and hundreds of eggs during sampling cruises in the central Baltic Sea in 2009–10. They found no adults and the larvae measured at most 1.6 millimetres. However, the larvae reproduced at a rate that would sustain the observed population.
The authors suggest that this comb jelly population may have been driven to reproduce at a young age in an attempt to avoid the abundant predators in the region.
Biol. Lett. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2012.0163 (2012)
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Jellies reproduce as little larvae. Nature 485, 9 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/485009c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/485009c
