Tag Archives: cnidarian

A Story About Mortality: What Jellyfish Can Teach Us

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The hydromedusa of Podocoryna borealis. (Image credit: Lara Beckmann, NorHydro, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Our existences are often centered around the hope that we will live a long and fulfilled life. At the same time, while we aim to grow old, many of us abhor the aging process, dreaming of remaining young and healthy for as long as possible. It explains why we are so fascinated by the concept of immortality. Think of vampire stories, constant quests for the fountain of youth, or even the newest anti-aging products in the drugstore next door. But apart from the few extra years we gain nowadays through modern medicine and improved life circumstances, many of us can’t extend our lives much further.

We share this fate with many other animals that go through the stages of birth, growth, reproduction and death. But despite that, we don’t need to rely on science-fiction to get a glimpse of everlasting life: some organisms on our planet don’t follow these stages and some cheat it altogether – escaping death almost completely.

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From Tiny Polyps to the Origin of Stem Cell Research

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Polyps of Schuchertinia allmanii. (Image Credit: Luis Martell, CC BY 4.0)

Polyps of Schuchertinia allmanii. (Image Credit: Luis Martell, CC BY 4.0, Image cropped)

Earth is a fountain of incredible abundances and varieties of life-forms, with many of them still undiscovered. Biodiversity is a key pillar for our life as we know it, and we are not only a small fraction of it, but also use and harness this richness for the benefit of our own species’ advancement. Many human advances are based on other organisms’ attributes and talents, which is why we use certain species as “model organisms” when pioneering scientific breakthroughs. One example of such a specific form of life has helped us make some serious inroads into forms of regeneration and even immortality over the last few billion years ago, and leading us to great discoveries in science.

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Sean Connolly: The Future of the Great Barrier Reef

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The Great Barrier Reef has experienced mass mortality in recent years. But can we save it, and how do we impose the severity of its condition on the public? (Image Credit: Kyle Taylor, CC BY 2.0)

The Great Barrier Reef has experienced mass mortality in recent years. But can we save it, and how do we impose the severity of its condition on the public? (Image Credit: Kyle Taylor, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped)

When I was a child, I was dragged around my home country of Australia on a family holiday. After days stuck in a back seat fighting with my sister we reached Cairns, and spent a day on the Great Barrier Reef, one of Australia’s premier tourist attractions and a biodiversity hotspot, home to a myriad of corals, fish and other marine life. It was incredible.

But nowadays, tourists are flocking to the reef to say goodbye. Extreme weather events in 2016 and 2017 left a massive portion of the reef (whose lagoon is the size of Italy) completely bleached, with coral dying at unprecedented rates.

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