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Introduction to Cnidaria
Jellyfish, corals, and other stingers Cnidarians are incredibly diverse in form, as evidenced by colonial siphonophores, massive medusae and corals, feathery hydroids, and box jellies with complex eyes. Yet, these diverse animals are all armed with stinging cells called nematocysts. Cnidarians are united based on the presumption that their nematocysts have been inherited from a single common ancestor.
The name Cnidaria comes from the Greek word "cnidos," which means stinging nettle. Casually touching many cnidarians will make it clear how they got their name when their nematocysts eject barbed threads tipped with poison.
Many thousands of cnidarian species live in the world's oceans, from the tropics to the poles, from the surface to the bottom. Some even burrow. A smaller number of species are found in rivers and fresh water lakes.
There are four major groups of cnidarians: Anthozoa, which includes true corals, anemones, and sea pens; Cubozoa, the amazing box jellies with complex eyes and potent toxins; Hydrozoa, the most diverse group with siphonophores, hydroids, fire corals, and many medusae; and Scyphozoa, the true jellyfish.
CNIDARIA Copied from httpwww.ucmp.berkeley.edubacteriacyanosy.html Cnidarians generally occupy two major niches. They may use their cnidocysts to trap prey items. On the other hand, many cnidarians, anthozoans in particular, depend on zooxanthellae, symbiotic dinoflagellates within the tissues, to survive. These singlecelled protists carry out photosynthesis within the animal's tissues, and pass on the carbon compounds they fix to their hosts; corals, therefore, are photosynthetic animals in a sense.
Some cnidarians are nearly completely dependent on zooxanthellae; others trap prey but augment their diet with zooxanthellae. While not all corals are dependent on symbionts some live at great depths where there is never light colonial, reef-forming corals depend on them; thus, reefs can only exist in shallow water. Notice the white areas on this coral reef exposed at low tide: this loss of symbionts, called bleaching, is deadly to coral reefs.
Cnidaria: Systematics
Cnidarians present particular problems for systematists. Their comparatively simple morphology makes it difficult to compare taxa. The fossil record of soft-bodied cnidarians is very sparse, although the record of corals and other mineralizing cnidarians is excellent. Few molecular phylogenetic analyses so far have examined the Cnidaria in great detail. Traditionally, it was thought that the Hydrozoa were the most primitive cnidarians. However, a recent cladistic analysis (Schuchert, 1993) and avaliable molecular data suggest that the Anthozoa, the only
group of living cnidarians that completely lacks a medusoid "jellyfish" stage in the life cycle, are in fact most primitive. This seems consistent with the fossil record of the Cnidaria, but further studies will be needed to refine this picture of cnidarian evolution. The phylum Ctenophora, which includes the "comb jellies," "sea gooseberries," and "Venus's girdles," is not currently considered to be part of the Cnidaria; however, the two are close relatives. The Cnidaria and Ctenophora are grouped together by some workers as the Coelenterata.