Anthomedusae - Decorative encyclopedic plate - Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur

Engraving reproduction of: Anthomedusae

Original title Anthomedusae - Blumenquallen

Poster of Gemmaria - Cnidarians of the class Medusae or Craspedotes (Order of floral jellyfish, Anthomedusae)

Illustration from the book Kunstformen der Natur, which is a collection of artistic lithographs of natural sciences published by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel between 1899 and 1904.

This naturalistic illustration is part of an overall style inspired by Ernst Haeckel, which greatly influenced the emerging Art Nouveau movement at the beginning of the ^20th century. This work, illustrating the impressive beauty and great diversity of the biological world, was complemented by a certain amount of scientific information, some excerpts of which are reproduced below.

This information is over 120 years old and some of it may be outdated!

Scientific classification:

 Cnidarian Phylum (Cnidaria)
Class of Jellyfish - Craspedotae
Order Anthomedusae (Anthomedusae)

Scientific notice (extract) accompanying the poster print of Anthomedusae - Anthomedusae :

Anthomedusae are distinguished from the other three orders of craspedote jellyfish (Plates 16, 26 and 36) by the fact that they do not have statocysts on the edge of the umbrella, but instead have eyes (usually four or eight, often many eyes, usually red or black). The sexual glands or gonads (both the ovaries of the females and the testes of the males) do not develop in them along the radial canals, as in the leptomedusae (Plate 36) and the trachymedusae (Plate 26), but rather in the wall of the stomach sac which hangs from the bottom of the umbrella cavity. Often, the gonads, whose contents—eggs and sperm—are released directly into the seawater, have a very elegant shape, with pinnate leaves (Figs. 5 and 6), curled or reticulated cushions (Figs. 2 and 4), etc. The buccal tube, through which the stomach opens at the bottom, is sometimes extended into a long proboscis (Fig. 6), most often divided into four large, very extensible and mobile buccal lobes, the edge of which is elegantly pleated and curled (Figs. 3, 4 and 5). Many anthomedusae also have elegant simple or branched buccal tentacles, bearing stinging pimples at their free end; they originate either at the buccal opening itself (Fig. 2) or at the base of the buccal tube or proboscis (Fig. 6). From the edge of the bell-shaped umbrella, four tentacles or prehensile arms originally arise at the end of the four radial canals; but often two opposite tentacles are reduced, the other two being correspondingly more developed (Figs. 1 and 6); often their number increases considerably later (Figs. 2 and 3). The anthomedusae are descended from the tubular hydroids (Tubulariae, Plate 6); they are still today in alternation of generations (metagenesis) with these. From the fertilized eggs of the free-swimming and highly organized medusae develop attached polyps of much simpler organization; these again produce medusae by budding.

Species present on the naturalist plate of Anthomedusae - Gemmaria :

• Gemmaria sagittaria
• Rathkea fasciculata
• Tiara pileata
• Stomotoca pterophylla
• Thamnostylus dinema