Discus Jellyfish - Natural History Art Poster - Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur

Engraving reproduction of: Disc jellyfish

Original title Discomedusae - Scheibenquallen

Poster of Aurelia - Cnidarians of the class Acraspedes (Acraspedae), Order Discomedusae

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This information is over 120 years old and some of it may be outdated!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 Scyphozoa (Acraspedae)
Order of Discomedusae (Discomedusae)
Suborder Semeostomes (Semostomae / Semaeostomeae)

Scientific notice (extract) accompanying the poster print of Discomedusae - Disc jellyfish :

Discomedusae, also called disc jellyfish, belong to the phylum Cnidaria, the class Acraspedae, and the suborder Semostomae. The discomedusae jellyfish shown in this plate have a radial structure similar to that of the semostomes illustrated in Plate 8. Their gelatinous umbrella, which serves as a swimming organ, shows in the center of its flat underside (sub-umbrella) the quadrangular mouth opening called the "oral cross." The four long arms extending from this cross are often ribbon-like and determine the first-order rays (radiates). Alternating with the oral arms are regularly the four gonads, now located in the second-order rays (interradiates) (Figs. 1, 3, 6, and 8). At their inner end, they carry four groups of mobile gastric filaments, which freely penetrate the gastric cavity to participate in digestion. On the edge of the umbrella there are eight external sensory ocelli (four perradial and four interradial); each sensory ocellus (rhopalium) is composed of three separate sensory organs: at the base (bottom in Fig. 7), an olfactory pit or nostril with branched folds; in the center, an eye (a round or lobed pigment body, often with a lens); at the free end (top in Fig. 7), an oval capsule containing calcite crystals, formerly considered an auditory vesicle, now recognized as an organ of balance (statocyst or organ of orientation). With the eight rhopalia usually alternate eight (sometimes more) long, motile tentacular filaments (in third-order rays, oradiate). Between the tentacles and rhopalia, originally, on the edge of the umbrella, were sixteen prominent marginal lobes (in fourth-order rays, subradiate, Fig. 9).

Species present on the naturalist plate of Disc jellyfish - Aurelia :

• Aurelia insulinda
• Aurelia aurita
• Undosa undulata
• Floresca parthenia
• Pearl Pelagia
• Drymonema victoria
• Procyanea protosema