#salpin salps

[donuts4evry1]

@tomnookishot

These are salps btw!

Phylum Chordata (aka the phylum with VERTEBRATES... disgusting), class Thaliacea, Order Salpida

They can come in a few shapes and sizes but these are colonial creatures (similar to Siphonophores like the Man whore but each individual is actually an individual, not a poorly defined organ/organism zooid)

They filter feed and are very silly. Chains can be longer than a blue whale because of course they are.

Anyways my hatred for them is mostly silly and mean spirited but if I'm going to be known for anything in the jelly community or jellyfish fandom, it's going to be my comical hatred of salps. And maybe comb jellyfish (beroe comb jellies scare me haha)

Btw, these are Pyrosomes (also known as fire bodies):

Same class, just in Order Pyrosomatida

They have a lovely bluish-green light display very characteristic of bioluminescent organisms and are very bright (just like the Periphylla jellyfish!)

Here's the image shown in Lisa Ann Gershwin's book! It's very pretty

When the photographer isn't making an effort to make them look pretty, I think they actually look kind of stupid, haha. But isn't that the appeal of jellyfish? To look stupid?

anyways have a nice day lol

[montereybayaquarium]

Visiting the Monterey Bay lately means taking a trip to the Salps!

Beachgoers and ocean explorers have been greeted by an estimated countless bazillions of salps caught up in current events, including these donut salps, Cyclosalpa affinis, found just offshore of the Aquarium last week!

Salps are prolific and prodigious filter-feeders and key members of the gelata—the myriad different gelatinous, drifting organisms that make up a significant part of the ocean’s mass of living creatures. Most salps have a bewildering life history that these cyclosalps illustrate beautifully.

The solitary phase of the salp is known as an oozooid—it will asexually produce long chains of clones known as gonozooids that you can see emerging in the photo above.

Now Cyclosalpa gonozooids aren’t just sexy plankton for their enchanting bouquets, oh no no—in this phase, most salps are sequentially hermaphroditic, starting off female with an egg that is fertilized by older, male individuals from other chains.

The embryo develops into an oozooid inside its sexually-reproducing parent—and those developing oozooids may already be growing their new clone chains before they’ve even flown the gelatinous nest! You can see the next generation developing inside these older gonozooids:

This alternation of generations enables salps to be some of the most productive organisms in the multi-cellular world, exploding in numbers overnight and drastically altering the planktonic landscape by feeding on a wide range of food sizes and starting blizzards of marine snow as sinking fecal pellets and food-stuffed mucous pours into deeper waters from the salpy deluge.

Salps are one of the ocean’s most influential biological players, and that’s not the only thing we share in common. Salps are invertebrate chordates, along with their tunicate cousins the pyrosomes, doliolids and sea squirts—those colorful reef-dwelling filter-feeders found throughout the world ocean.

These animals all look rather like we do in their early stages, with a notochord in their larval form that is largely lost in transition to adulthood in the tunicates, while being replaced in purpose by a backbone in fishes, birds and us mammals.

So as alien as salps may appear to be in their midwater manner, they’re some of our closest invertebrate kin—and a key part of the backbone of our ocean planet’s operations.

[donuts4evry1]

stop salp slander 2023 (please they're trying their best)

Actually no salps freak me out to no end.

👉👈.

It's less like Salp slander and more like, me spreading the truth about salps

[donuts4evry1]

OMG DSHFKLASDHGKJASDKJFBSDG THIS IS BRILLIANT WAIT A SEC-

alr im done

(but fun fact- Salps are a part of a subphylum called "tunicata" which is basically in reference to their outer covering/skin that resembles a tunic. Or uh, in this case, the water wriggler's tube thingy)

@tomnookishot

These are salps btw!

Phylum Chordata (aka the phylum with VERTEBRATES... disgusting), class Thaliacea, Order Salpida

They can come in a few shapes and sizes but these are colonial creatures (similar to Siphonophores like the Man whore but each individual is actually an individual, not a poorly defined organ/organism zooid)

They filter feed and are very silly. Chains can be longer than a blue whale because of course they are.

Anyways my hatred for them is mostly silly and mean spirited but if I'm going to be known for anything in the jelly community or jellyfish fandom, it's going to be my comical hatred of salps. And maybe comb jellyfish (beroe comb jellies scare me haha)

Btw, these are Pyrosomes (also known as fire bodies):

Same class, just in Order Pyrosomatida

They have a lovely bluish-green light display very characteristic of bioluminescent organisms and are very bright (just like the Periphylla jellyfish!)

Here's the image shown in Lisa Ann Gershwin's book! It's very pretty

When the photographer isn't making an effort to make them look pretty, I think they actually look kind of stupid, haha. But isn't that the appeal of jellyfish? To look stupid?

anyways have a nice day lol