Abstract
Despite jellyfish’s ecological and socioeconomic impacts, they are still an understudied component of marine ecosystems. Even with its conspicuous size, reaching ~ 1 m in bell diameter, Drymonema gorgo has been rarely observed, with only a few occurrences in the literature, suggesting that it is not a common species. Here, we gathered historical records from literature, personal communication, and novel data from the World Wide Web (WWW) to obtain observations of D. gorgo along the Brazilian coast. A total of 63 observations from 1857 to 2022 were compiled, of which 57 were extracted from the web. Observations on this jellyfish concentrated between 22° S and 27° S, especially in the Cabo Frio region in Rio de Janeiro. They were reported throughout the year, except in August and October, with the highest concentrations in March (late summer). Based on the notable complement on information about its occurrence in the last ten years, we hypothesize that D. gorgo is probably not as rare as suggested by the near absence of previous literature records. In addition, biological associations of D. gorgo with other species were also discovered such as (1) predation on the jellyfish Aurelia sp. and Chrysaora lactea; (2) food item for the green turtle Chelonia mydas; and (3) association with fishes. This study provides evidence of the potential use of the WWW to obtain ecological data about conspicuous marine species occurrence, such as D. gorgo, helping to fill knowledge gaps and overcome difficulties in its detection using traditional methodologies.
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Data availability
The images extracted and analyzed in this study are available in Nascimento et al. (2023). We compiled data for this study by inspecting publicly available photographs and videos on the World Wide Web.
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Acknowledgements
We specially thank Cláudia Ferreira, Casal Viking, Eduardo Rocha Fritzen, Matias Gomes, Rafael Bonante Dias and Renato Magalhães for kindly providing information and images about their observations, as well as written permission to share it in the present study. We also thank all anonymous social media user who shared observations of Drymonema gorgo. We would also to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on this version of the manuscript.
Funding
This study is part of LSN PhD thesis and was supported by the Coordination for the Improvement of High Education Personnel—CAPES, grant no. 88882.382983/2019–01. TBB acknowledges the productivity stipend from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development—CNPq, Grant No. 312211/2020-01, call no. 09/2020.
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The Human Research Ethics Committee of Federal University of Paraná (CEP/UFPR) manifests itself by approving Research Project number 4.751.477 on 02.06.2021, CAAE: 46505721.7.0000.0102. No animal testing was performed during this study.
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Nascimento, L.S., Noernberg, M.A., Bleninger, T.B. et al. Not such a rare species, after all? Insights into Drymonema gorgo Müller 1883 (Cnidaria, Scyphozoa), a large and little-known jellyfish from Brazil. Aquat Ecol 58, 17–30 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10452-023-10074-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10452-023-10074-2