Jennifer E. Purcell

Western Washington University | WWU · Department of Biology

Jellyfish populations apparently have increased in some places around the world and human problems with them also have increased. However, effects of jellyfish outbreaks in the ecosystems remain poorly understood and little or no information is available on their dietary preferences - in relation to the seasonal shifts of prey abundance - and on th...

This study investigates the possible pathways for Pelagia noctiluca intrusions over the shelf to understand the interactions between jellyfish and fish larvae. To assess how the presence of P. noctiluca may influence populations of Engraulis encrasicolus and Trachurus trachurus, we analyzed the effect of environmental conditions on the abundance an...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0195352.].

Aquaculture is increasing rapidly to meet global seafood demand. Some hydroid populations have been linked to mortality and health issues in finfish and shellfish, but their dynamics in and around aquaculture farms remain understudied. In the present work, two experiments, each with 36 panels, tested colonization (factors: depth, season of immersio...

Standardized surface area covered by each hydrozoan species on each panel. (XLSX)

Temperature data for the Gulf of Taranto thoughout the study period. (XLSX)

As jellyfish interactions with humans increase in coastal waters, there is an urgent need to provide science-based management strategies to mitigate the negative socioeconomic impacts of jellyfish blooms and to exploit potential benefits of their ecosystem services. This Theme Section presents the latest advances in jellyfish research, from new sam...

The benthic polyps are important in jellyfish outbreaks, which seem to have become more intense and are causing increasing problems to humans. We studied annual and seasonal changes of the moon jellyfish, Aurelia aurita s.l., polyp population dynamics in situ. Over three years, we took monthly photographs to quantify the abundance and occurrence of...

This paper follows my journey from childhood in Missouri, where I saw my first jellyfish, to the oceans of the world. Pelagic cnidarians and ctenophores (“jellies”) have been the focus of my career. I think my work has been relevant to the broader scientific community because jellies are predators and potential competitors of fish. In my early rese...

ABSTRACT: Jellyfish and ctenophore blooms are of increasing concern for human enterprise in marine waters, although bloom development remains poorly understood. A key factor in population dynamics of blooms is individual lifespan, which for most gelatinous zooplankton is assumed to be only a few months, often from spring to autumn. Accumulating evi...

Historically, jellyfish have been little studied relative to fishes, and they have been considered to be nuisances to humans and of little ecological importance. Research in the last 3 decades on Aequorea spp. hydromedusae highlights how important jellyfish are, how little is known, and the many needs and opportunities for studies on jellyfish. The...

http://meetings.pices.int/members/working-groups/disbanded/wg26

http://meetings.pices.int/members/working-groups/disbanded/wg26

http://meetings.pices.int/members/working-groups/disbanded/wg26

http://meetings.pices.int/members/working-groups/disbanded/wg26

Jellyfish are important predators of fish eggs and larvae and predation is believed to be the main factor determining fish recruitment. The diet of different life stages of Pelagia noctiluca and their potential predation impact on ichthyoplankton were investigated in the NW Mediterranean Sea. In June, the spatial distribution of jellyfish and fish...

The mitigation of coastal hazards, notably jellyfish blooms, has assumed great significance in recent years in view of the potential detrimental impact of such hazards on the welfare of coastal communities. This is especially true in a basin such as the Mediterranean with a very high degree of coastal settlement and dependence on coastal economic a...

Jellyfish outbreaks are increasingly viewed as a deterministic response to escalating levels of environmental degradation and climate extremes. However, a comprehensive understanding of the influence of deterministic drivers and stochastic environmental variations favouring population renewal processes has remained elusive. This study quantifies th...

2015. Presentation at The 8th workshop of the Hydrozoan Society. Ischia (Italy)

Frequent blooms of the giant jellyfish, Nemopilema nomurai, have occurred in the East Asian Marginal Seas since 2000 and have had a devastating effect on commercial fisheries. To determine the probability of future bloom development to permit effective countermeasures, it is essential to assess the influence of environmental factors on polyp develo...

Surface-dwelling colonies of Velella velella occur throughout tropical to cold-temperate oceans of the world and sometimes are stranded in masses along hundreds of kilometers of beaches. Large-scale blooms in the Western Mediterranean Sea in 2013 and 2014 allowed the study of diet, prey digestion times and predation rates. Gastrozooid content analy...

Jellyfish are usually perceived as harmful to humans and are seen as “pests”. This negative perception has hindered knowledge regarding their value in terms of ecosystem services. As humans increasingly modify and interact with coastal ecosystems, it is important to evaluate the benefits and costs of jellyfish, given that jellyfish bloom size, freq...

Predation is the principal direct cause of mortality of fish eggs and larvae (ichthyoplankton). Pelagic cnidarians and ctenophores are consumers of ichthyoplankton and zooplankton foods of fish, yet few estimates exist of predation effects in situ. Microscopic analyses of the gastric ‘gut’ contents of gelatinous predators reveal the types and amoun...

Massive occurrences of jellyfish can cause direct impacts on the economy, especially on tourism and commercial fisheries. Translocation of jellyfish species by humans has caused damaging blooms in new habitats. Aurelia aurita s.l. has been introduced in many locations around the world. To test the potential success of Au. aurita s.l. in various hab...

Blooms of Nemopilema nomurai medusae have plagued East Asian coastal waters during the last decade. Recent studies indicate that the benthic polyp phase is important for reproductive potential and survival in scyphozoans. We investigated the effects of temperature and food on the development of N. nomurai polyps in the laboratory in Dalian, China....

In recent years, jellyfish blooms have attracted considerable scientific interest for their potential impacts on human activities and ecosystem functioning, with much attention paid to jellyfish as predators and to gelatinous biomass as a carbon sink. Other than qualitative data and observations, few studies have quantified direct predation of fish...

Plankton concentrations near discontinuities in the water column (clines) are be - lieved to be important for intensifying trophic interactions; however, evidence for increased feeding by predators at clines in situ is scarce. Here we demonstrate enhanced feeding near pycnoclines by a voracious planktivore, the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi. To dete...

Medusa production in cubozoans may be associated with reduced-salinity waters. Asexual reproduction of Carybdea sp. differed at different salinities. The metamorphosis of Carybdea sp. polyps into medusae was accelerated at low salinity (32), while more polyps were budded from the original polyp at the highest salinity (38), probably due to prolonge...

Jellyfish form spectacular blooms throughout the world’s oceans. Jellyfish body plans are characterised by high water and low carbon contents which enables them to grow much larger than non-gelatinous animals of equivalent carbon content and to deviate from non-gelatinous pelagic animals when incorporated into allometric relationships. Jellyfish ha...

Longevity as a function of ESD for jellyfish and other pelagic taxa uncorrected for temperature. Data sources are available in Dataset S1. (EPS)

Reference list for data used in Dataset S1. (DOCX)

Complete set of data used in analyses. (XLSX)

Data used to compare rates of respiration of jellyfish and other pelagic taxa from different depths. (XLSX)

Rates of respiration as a function of ESD for jellyfish and other epipelagic and meso-bathypelagic pelagic taxa. Data sources are available in Dataset S2. (EPS)

The ecology of cubozoans is poorly understood and controlled experiments on all life history stages are needed. E�orts to understand the distribution of Carybdea marsupialis in the Spanish Mediterranean coast are now in progress following its outbreak in 2008. As far as we know, no previous data exist on the e�ects of key environmental variables on...

The ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi, a species native to estuaries and coastal regions of the western Atlantic Ocean, was first introduced into the Black Sea in the early 1980s, where it negatively affected zooplankton biodiversity and biomass, and commercial fisheries. This invasive ctenophore was first reported along the Spanish Mediterranean coast...

'Jellyfish’ is a popular term used for any gelatinous animal in marine waters. The true jellyfish include hundreds of different kinds of umbrella-shaped swimming and stinging animals in the phylum Cnidaria. A related painful stinger is the floating Portuguese man-of-war. The cnidarians are responsible for most of the outbreaks that humans notice an...

Jellyfish (Cnidaria, Scyphozoa) blooms appear to be increasing in both intensity and frequency in many coastal areas worldwide, due to multiple hypothesized anthropogenic stressors. Here, we propose that the proliferation of artificial structures — associated with (1) the exponential growth in shipping, aquaculture, and other coastal industries, an...

This chapter begins by reviewing the fisheries and culture of jellyfish for human food, multi-million-dollar industries with markets currently centered in Asia. Second, we present guidelines for culture conditions and tank construction for display or study of 27 jellyfish species. Most types of jellyfish (scyphomedusae, hydromedusae, siphonophores...

A perceived recent increase in global jellyfish abundance has been portrayed as a symptom of degraded oceans. This perception is based primarily on a few case studies and anecdotal evidence, but a formal analysis of global temporal trends in jellyfish populations has been missing. Here, we analyze all available long-term datasets on changes in jell...

The invasive ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi, which now may be established in the NW Mediterranean, is a voracious predator of zooplankton and ichthyoplankton. Pelagia noctiluca, an abundant scyphomedusa there, eats other gelatinous species. We measured predation, digestion and escape when different sizes of medusae fed on ctenophores. Clearance rates...

There is concern that jellyfish blooms may be increasing worldwide. Some factors controlling population size, such as temperature and food, often have been studied; however, the importance of predators is poorly known. Aeolid nudibranchs feed on cnidarians, but their predation on the benthic polyps of scyphozoan rarely has been documented. To under...

The genus Mnemiopsis is comprised of a single species, Mnemiopsis leidyi A. Agassiz, 1865, that has recently made the transition from a distribu-tion limited to the Atlantic coasts of North and South America to an invasive range that includes the Black, Caspian, Mediterranean, North, and Baltic seas. We review the foundations of the ctenophore's in...

The pleustonic hydrozoan, Velella velella, occurs throughout tropical to cold-temperate oceans of the world and sometimes are stranded in masses along hundreds of kilometers of beaches. In June 2009, we encountered algal rafts in the Celtic Sea containing many V. velella that we immediately preserved for gut content analysis. Available prey were en...

In recent decades, many areas worldwide have experienced mass occurrences of jellyfish. To determine how temperature may affect jellyfish populations in the northwest (NW) Mediterranean Sea, we maintained polyps of three scyphozoan species, Aurelia aurita, Rhizostoma pulmo, and Cotylorhiza tuberculata in the laboratory at three temperatures (14, 21...

The invasive ctenophore, Mnemiopsis leidyi, which had its first mass occurrence in Limfjorden (Denmark) in 2007, and the indigenous common jellyfish, Aurelia aurita, were studied from autumn 2008 through summer 2009. By December 2008, both A. aurita and M. leidyi populations had disappeared for the winter. In 2009, the first A. aurita appeared in F...

In recent decades, many areas worldwide have experienced mass occurrences of jellyfish. To determine how temperature may affect jellyfish populations in the northwest (NW) Mediterranean Sea, we maintained polyps of three scyphozoan species, Aurelia aurita, Rhizostoma pulmo, and Cotylorhiza tuberculata in the laboratory at three temperatures (14, 21...

During the past several decades, high numbers of gelatinous zooplankton species have been reported in many estuarine and coastal ecosystems. Coupled with media-driven public perception, a paradigm has evolved in which the global ocean ecosystems are thought to be heading toward being dominated by “nuisance” jellyfish. We question this current parad...

Human populations have been concentrated along and exploiting the coastal zones for millennia. Ofregions with the highest human impacts on the oceans (Halpern et al. 2008), 6 of the top 10 have recently experienced blooms or problems with jellies. I review the time lines of human population growth and their effects on the coastal environment. I exp...

In recent decades, many areas worldwide have experienced mass occurrences of jellyfish. To determine how temperature may affect jellyfish populations in the northwest (NW) Mediterranean Sea, we maintained polyps of three scyphozoan species, Aurelia aurita, Rhizostoma pulmo, and Cotylorhiza tuberculata in the laboratory at three temperatures (14, 21...

Jellyfish (Cnidaria, Scyphozoa) blooms appear to be increasing in both intensity and frequency in many coastal areas worldwide, due to multiple hypothesized anthropogenic stressors. Here, we propose that the proliferation of artificial structures – associated with (1) the exponential growth in shipping, aquaculture, and other coastal industries, an...

Jellyfish generally are considered to be nuisances because they interfere with human activities by stinging swimmers, clogging power plant intakes and nets of fishermen, killing fish in aquaculture pens, and being both predators and competitors of fish. There is concern that environmental changes such as global warming, eutrophication, over-fishing...