JBS-12 Challenges in jellyfish research and how we deal with these

 

Jellyfish research is an evolving field that faces many challenges, largely due to practical and technical limitations. As has been shown for a few species, e.g. Aurelia aurata, if enough effort is invested in their study, this leads to advances in our understanding of its biology and ecology. Our knowledge of most other scyphozoa is rather limited because: a) relatively few researchers work on jellyfish, and b) we lack suitable methods. This session will be dedicated to defining the gaps in both knowhow and necessary methods to help advance our knowledge. Examples of just a few of these shortcoming include: 1) locating the elusive scyphozoan polyps in the sea, 2) the lack of affordable and reliable protocols to determine abundances of medusae at sea, 3) calculating clearance rates, feeding rates and prey preferences in-situ and in-vitro. We would like to solicit contributions to this session which describe such methodological gaps, and we encourage the presentation of new and innovative methods to study jellyfish biology and ecology.

 

Chairs:

Dror Angel - University of Haifa (Israel)

Zafrir Kuplik - University of Haifa (Israel)

Agustín Schiariti - Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo Pesquero, CONICET (Argentina)