Sertulariidae - Scientific lithograph - Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur

Engraving reproduction of: Sertulariidae

Original title Sertulariae - Reihenpolypen

Poster of Diphasia - Cnidarians of the class Hydrozoa (Order Sertularia or Hydroidae)

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This information is over 120 years old and some of it may be outdated!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)
Main class of Hydraids (Hydrozoa)
Class Hydrozoa (Hydroidea)
Order Sertulariidae (Sertulariae)

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

The Sertularia or Serial Polyps belong to that group of Hydrozoa which never develop into swimming medusae, but always retain the original form of attached polyps. The corms or colonies of this order are always richly branched and composed of numerous small individuals or individual polyps. The latter generally occur in two different forms, resulting from a division of labor, as feeding animals (Hydranthes) and breeding animals (Gonophora). The Hydranthes or "feeding polyps" (Fig. 1) bear a simple crown of movable tentacles or prehensile filaments, which serve both to sense and capture prey, and are armed with nematocysts; their simple gastric cavity opens at the top by a mouth at the apex of a conical proboscis. The Gonophora or reproductive polyps (Fig. 9), on the other hand, have neither tentacles nor mouth; They develop in the wall of their closed gastric cavity the sexual cells used for reproduction; the females form eggs, the males sperm. The nutrition of the whole colony is common, since the gastric cavities of all the individuals communicate by the hollow tubes of the branches (Figs. 6-8, 11). The delicate bodies of the polyps are enclosed in horny protective capsules, into which they can retract (Figs. 6 and 11). The tubular protective capsules of the feeding polyps (hydrothecae) are generally regularly arranged in two opposite rows on the bilateral branches of the colony (Figs. 2, 3, 8 and 11). Between them are found, distributed individually (Figs. 2 and 11) or in pairs (Figs. 3, 6 and 7), the larger protective capsules of the reproductive polyps (Gonangia); their delicate shape often resembles an urn (Figs. 4, 5 and 9).

Species present on the Sertulariidae - Diphasia naturalist board :

• Diphasia pinaster
• Synthecium elegans
• Idia pristis
• Thuiaria quadridens
• Synthecium campylocarpum
• Desmoscyphus acanthocarpus
• Eusertularia exserta
• Dynamena argentea
• Thecocladium flabellum