Like other box jellyfish, the new species has 24 eyes, arranged in groups of six around its cube-shaped body.
Scientists from Hong Kong have discovered tiny cubic jellyfish in a brackish pond with shrimps, which are completely unknown to science.
These miniature jellyfish have a completely transparent and colorless body, or bell, and 12 tentacles ending in small, paddle-like structures that allow them to move through the water faster than most other jellyfish.
Like other box jellyfish—a group of cnidarians that includes the Australian box jellyfish (Chironex fleckeri), the most venomous sea creature on the planet, according to the National Ocean Service—the newly described jellyfish have 24 eyes, arranged in groups of six around a cubical bell.
“This box jellyfish connects the base of its tentacles and bell with a flat base that looks like a boat paddle, which distinguishes it from other common jellyfish,” Qiu Jianwen, a professor in the Department of Biology at Hong Kong Baptist University who led the study, said in the video. “Another unique feature of the box jellyfish is that it has six eyes, located on either side of its body.”
The researchers named the new species Tripedalia maipoensis after the Mai Po Nature Reserve in Hong Kong where they discovered it. They describe its features and relationships to other box jellyfish in a study published March 20 in the journal Zoological Studies.
T. maipoensis is the first box jellyfish found in Chinese waters. It’s unclear whether the half-inch-long (1.5 centimeters) animal can sting a human, but it may be venomous enough to stun a small shrimp known as brine shrimp. “It appears to have paralyzed a brine shrimp presented in the lab,” Qiu told Live Science in an email. “But we did not touch the creature to test the sting.”
The researchers first noticed the unusual creatures in samples collected from a tidal shrimp pond, known locally as a “gei wai,” during the summers of 2020–2022. The jellyfish were “quite abundant,” Qiu told Live Science, with “up to 400 individuals in the pond area.” The brackish pool’s tidal channel suggests the species may also inhabit the adjacent waters of the Pearl River Estuary, but no studies have yet been conducted to confirm this, the researchers wrote in their paper.
Box jellyfish, also known as sea wasps, move by forcing water through channels that run along a muscular membrane on the underside of their bodies and then expelling it. Researchers have found that, unlike closely related species, T. maipoensis has branched channels that split into multiple arms. The newly discovered species is the third known member of a group of box jellyfish that are distinguished by tentacles that have flat, paddle-like structures called Tripedalia.
The scientists also noted that each group of six eyes on the jellyfish's bell cube includes a pair of eyes with lenses that can form images, as well as four eyes that can only perceive light.
The species likely feeds on small crustaceans called copepods, which were found in large numbers in samples collected from the shrimp pond, Qiu said.
“We are thrilled by this discovery,” Qiu said in the video. “The discovery of a new species in Mai Po, where extensive research has been conducted, highlights the potential for discovering more marine animals in Hong Kong and even in coastal waters in China.”
TOPICS new species
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