MYSTERIES OF THE ANIMAL WORLD / NEW JELLYFISH: Big Red has cluster of arms, not tentacles

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In the cold, dark waters north of the Farallon Islands, nearly a mile beneath the surface, scientists have discovered a new species of huge jellyfish with a striking red bell that grows more than a yard wide and has a cluster of wrinkled, fleshy arms instead of streaming tentacles.

They call it Big Red, and its entire life is a mystery. The researchers don't know whether the ones they have observed are males or females, they don't know how they reproduce, and they don't know what they eat or what eats them.

They do know that the jellyfish has anywhere from four to seven thick arms and uses them for eating. It also carries wartlike clusters of stinging cells. They think -- but don't know -- that it may prey on smaller jellies for food.

In a formal scientific report on the new tribe of jellies, marine biologists led by George Matsumoto of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing have announced that so far 23 members of the curious species have been found in the Sea of Cortez, in Monterey Bay itself, off the coast north of the Farallones and off Hawaii and Japan. It appears to live at depths of 2,000 to 4,800 feet, they say.

Only one specimen of Big Red has been collected intact by the scientists so far, and this one is tiny: Its bell is only 8 inches wide, and it now lies pickled in a glass jar for scientists to study at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, Matsumoto said.

But using the remote-controlled deep-diving submarine known as an ROV, for Remotely Operated Vehicle, Matsumoto and his team have obtained high- resolution video images of Big Red swimming and have managed to take tissue samples of one, including bits of its bell and its thick feeding appendages called oral arms. They have also begun sequencing its genetic material and have sent the sequence data to the government's National Center for Biotechnology Information.

From their samples, the scientists found that Big Red differs so much from all other species in a much larger family of jellies known as the Ulmaridae that they can call Big Red a unique member of a subfamily that the researchers now call Tiburoniinae.

So, to scientists who classify all living things systematically in their efforts to puzzle out their evolution, Big Red is now a unique species in a unique genus in a unique subfamily within its own larger family. Big Red's evolutionary ancestry and its living relatives -- if any -- must await further analysis of other specimens.

"For now," Matsumoto said in an interview, "the good news is that Big Red is unique and fascinating and exciting, while the bad news is that it takes so much more research work to classify it, to publish what we learn about it, and eventually to understand all the things we don't know about it. But even that's fun, too."

The tissue samples that Matsumoto obtained were collected from a specimen they found swimming next to an offshore volcanic mound on the ocean bottom called the Gumdrop Seamount, 30 miles south-southeast of the main Farallon island.

At first, Matsumoto said, they named their specimen Gumdrop after the seamount, but they decided later to name the unique genus Tiburonia after the name of the Monterey Bay Aquarium research vessel Tiburon, whose crew controls the ROV, and named the species granrojo, meaning Big Red.

Matsumoto's formal report is published in the journal Marine Biology. His colleagues include Kevin Raskoff, a former research fellow at the Monterey Bay institute, and Dhugal Lindsay, of Japan's Marine Science and Technology Center.

DISTRIBUTION OF BIG RED

CLASS

SCYPHOZOA (Jellyfishes)

ORDER

CORONATAE (crown jellyfishes)

RHIZOSTOMEAE (includes upsidedown jellyfishes)

STAUROMEDUSAE (stalked jellyfishes)

SEMAEOSTOMEAE

FAMILY

Ulmaridae (moon jellyfishes)

Tiburoniiae

New subfamily

Tiburonia granrojo (big red)

Sources: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute; National Center for Biotechnology Information