Stauromedusae - Scientific Art Reproduction - Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur

Engraving reproduction of: Stauromedusae

Original title Stauromedusae - Becherquallen

Poster of Lucernaria - Cnidarians of the class Medusae or Craspedotes (Order of pedunculated jellyfish, Stauromedusae)

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This information is over 120 years old and some of it may be outdated!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

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

The order Stauromedusae is the oldest and most primitive of all acraspedes and contains the forms that are closest to the common ancestor of the entire class. The simplest forms are the tesseriids (Tessera and Tesserantha, Figs. 1 and 2); their organization differs only slightly from that of the scyphistoma, the polyp larval form of acrasped jellyfish that still plays a role in the embryonic development of most acraspedes. While these small tesseriids are usually free-swimming (like other jellyfish), the larger representatives of a second family, the lucernarius, have again adapted to the sessile lifestyle of their older polyp ancestors and attached themselves to the seabed by the tip of their umbrella; in most species, a long, muscular peduncle has developed as a result. As a result, these lamp jellyfish, which hang like a lamp from their peduncle or stand upright on it, have taken on the form of polyps; they were therefore formerly classified among the corals. However, their anatomy, especially the structure of the umbrella and the nutrient organs (the gastrovascular system), clearly shows that they are descended from acrasped jellyfish that have lost the ability to swim. A characteristic feature of true lucernarii is that the eight marginal lobes of their umbrella develop eight brush-like tufts of small secondary tentacles, while the original eight main tentacles located between them (four primary perradials and four secondary interradials) remain only as small, bean-shaped "marginal anchors" (Fig. 3-5) or disappear completely (Fig. 7).

Species present on the Stauromedusae - Lucernaria naturalist board :

• Tesserantha connecteus
• Haliclystus auricula
• Lucernaria bathyphila
• Lucernaria pyramidalis