Cnidarians and
Ctenophores
A Fearsome Tiny Weapon
- Cnidarians are mostly soft-bodied
and sessile or weak swimmers
- They are effective predators with
tentacles that have nematocysts
- Nematocysts are tiny weapons that
fire threads with toxin and paralyze
prey
- Nematocysts can also harm humans
with varying degrees of severity
The two phyla discussed in this chapter are diploblastic, meaning they have two embryonic cell layers:
ectoderm and endoderm.
Diploblasts undergo gastrulation, a developmental stage that produces the cell layers of adult animals.
The diploblastic phyla are Cnidaria and Ctenophora, with adult organisms exhibiting radial or biradial
symmetry and lacking cephalization.
Some biologists consider the two adult layers of placozoans equivalent to derivatives of ectoderm and
endoderm.
Gelatinous animals like sea anemones, jellies, and comb jellies are making news due to their impact on
humans, including beach closures, reduced fish harvests, and clogged fishing nets and intake valves.
PHYLUM
CNIDARIA
● Phylum Cnidaria includes over 9000 species of diverse and interesting
marine animals, such as jellyfish, sea anemones, and corals.
● They are named after their unique stinging cells called cnidocytes.
● Cnidarians are ancient animals with a fossil history of over 700 million years
and are mostly found in marine habitats, with some living in freshwater.
● They are efficient predators despite being mostly sessile or slow-moving.
● Cnidarians can live symbiotically with other animals, and reef-building
corals are of economic importance as a food source and tourist attraction.
● There are traditionally four classes of Cnidaria (Hydrozoa, Scyphozoa,
Cubozoa, and Anthozoa), with a proposed fifth class (Staurozoa) and a sixth
class of parasitic forms (Myxozoa) identified by molecular data.
Form and Function
Dimorphism and Polymorphism in Cnidarians
Cnidarians display dimorphism, with two
morphological types: polyp and medusa
Polyp is adapted to sedentary or sessile life,
while medusa is adapted for floating or
free-swimming
Each type retains the saclike body plan
characteristic of the phylum
Medusa is essentially an upside-down,
unattached polyp with a widened and flattened
bell shape.
Dimorphism is the phenomenon of having two distinct forms of individuals
within the same species. For example, some animals have different body shapes,
sizes, or colors depending on their sex, age, or environmental conditions.
Dimorphism can have various evolutionary advantages, such as increasing
reproductive success, avoiding competition, or adapting to different habitats.
Polymorphism is a concept in object-oriented programming that allows an
object to have different forms or behaviors depending on the context. For
example, a polymorphic object can be treated as an instance of its own class or
any of its superclasses. Polymorphism enables code reuse and flexibility.
Polyps
Polyps have tubular bodies with a mouth surrounded by tentacles and a gastrovascular cavity.
The aboral end of the polyp is usually attached to a substratum by a pedal disc or other device.
Polyps may reproduce asexually by budding, fission, or pedal laceration.
A shared gastrovascular cavity allows for polyp specialization and the formation of colonies exhibiting polymorphism.
Polymorphism occurs when a single genotype can express more than one body form, for example, when an individual asexually produces other
individuals with different morphologies.
In class Hydrozoa, feeding polyps (hydranths) are distinguished from reproductive polyps (gonangia) by the absence of tentacles in gonangia.
Individual polyps within a colony are called zooids and may be specialized for particular functions such as feeding (gastrozooids) or reproduction
(gonozooids).
Other methods of asexual reproduction in polyps are fission and pedal laceration, which are common in sea anemones in class Anthozoa.
Medusae
Cnidarians have two morphological types: polyps and medusae
Polyps have tubular bodies with a mouth surrounded by tentacles at the oral end, and are usually attached to a
substratum by a pedal disc
Polyps can reproduce asexually by budding, fission, or pedal laceration, and may form clonal or colonial groups with
shared gastrovascular cavities
Medusae are free-swimming and have bell- or umbrella-shaped bodies with tentacles extending outward from the
rim
Medusae have sensory structures and a nerve ring for integrating sensory information with motor response
Scyphomedusae are medusae of class Scyphozoa, while hydromedusae are medusae of class Hydrozoa and have a
velum for efficient water flow.
