Behavioural and oceanographic isolation of an island-based jellyfish (Copula sivickisi, Class Cubozoa) population

Schlaefer, Jodie A., Wolanski, Eric, Lambrechts, Jonathan, and Kingsford, Michael J. (2021) Behavioural and oceanographic isolation of an island-based jellyfish (Copula sivickisi, Class Cubozoa) population. Scientific Reports, 11. 10280.

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View at Publisher Website: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-89755...
 
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Abstract

Cubozoan jellyfish are classified as plankton despite the strong swimming and orientation abilities of cubomedusae. How these capabilities could affect cubozoan population structures is poorly understood. Medusae of the cubozoan Copula sivickisi can uniquely attach to surfaces with the sticky pads on their bells. Biophysical modelling was used to investigate the spatial scales of connectivity in a C. sivickisi population. When the medusae were active at night they could maintain their observed distribution on fringing reef if they attached to the reef when the current speed exceeded a moderate threshold. This behaviour facilitated the isolation of a C. sivickisi population on reefs fringing Magnetic Island, Queensland, Australia. Within this distribution, there was considerable within bay retention and medusae rarely travelled > 3 km. The few (< 0.1%) medusae lost from the island habitat were largely advected into open water and away from the mainland coast which lies 8 km from the island. Given that successful emigration is unlikely, the island population probably represents a stock that is ecologically distinct from any mainland populations. The cosmopolitan distribution of C. sivickisi could contain incipient or cryptic species given the small scales of connectivity demonstrated here.

Item ID: 68030
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 2045-2322
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Copyright Information: © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Additional Information:

A version of this publication was included as Chapter 4 of the following PhD thesis: Schlaefer, Jodie Anne (2020) Determining the population structures of cubozoan jellyfishes with biophysical modelling. PhD thesis, James Cook University, which is available Open Access in ResearchOnline@JCU. Please see the Related URLs for access.

Funders: ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, Australian Lions Foundation
Research Data: https://doi.org/10.25903/9fpt-e946
Date Deposited: 17 May 2021 00:19
FoR Codes: 51 PHYSICAL SCIENCES > 5105 Medical and biological physics > 510501 Biological physics @ 33%
31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310307 Population ecology @ 34%
31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3109 Zoology > 310901 Animal behaviour @ 33%
SEO Codes: 28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280102 Expanding knowledge in the biological sciences @ 100%
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