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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 7h

Happy #CtenophoreCtuesday! For your moment of zen, enjoy an open-water encounter with a comb jelly and some strange hitchhikers 🪼🦐 What different species can you identify? Credit video to uber-talented videographer & photographer @cephwarden.bsky.social 🤿🌊 #MarineLife #scicomm #ctenophore #combjelly

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Lisa @tuexplorer1.bsky.social · 3h

Beautiful lobate ctenophore @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 971 #samplinggap #MarineLife

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 7h

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 10h

Cool new work from @pawelburkhardt.bsky.social et al. 🪼🥚 ALT: Life stages of Mnemiopsis leidyi starting at one-cell transitioning to the larval (cydippid) stage (top left). As it grows, it loses its tentacles & transitions to adult (lobate) stage. At various stages, it can produce eggs (arrows). 🦑

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Pawel Burkhardt @pawelburkhardt.bsky.social · 12h

Can a comb jelly choose whether to reproduce as a larva or grow up first? 🪼 Our new preprint shows that in Mnemiopsis leidyi, this depends on the density of other comb jellies. A story of surprising developmental plasticity! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵 1/4 📸 @beziostudio.bsky.social

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Much older than dinosaurs, comb jellies have been around since the Cambrian Period (~500 mya) 🤯 Fossils found in Utah suggest early species had upwards of 24 comb rows & a sensory system! Learn more about the findings: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... Stay tuned for more #CtenophoreFunFacts! 🦑

Figure 2 taken from Parry et al. 2021

Holotype specimen of Ctenorhabdotus campanelliformis sp. nov. from the Drumian Marjum Formation in Utah

(A and B) Counterpart and part (mirrored) of UMNH.IP.6125, photographed immersed in water under cross polarized light; dotted line in panel (A) indicates area examined for elemental analysis.

(C) Energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) elemental map of carbon in the counterpart.

(D) Interpretative drawing of whole specimen, colors as in Figure 1 and as shown.

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Kevin Thiessen, PhD @kevinthiessen.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Affectionately called “The Soup Bucket,” this contains all the comb jellies I’ve refused to cull since I started 😫 Each speck is one jelly of various sizes (0.1 to 3 mm). I can see why people have trouble getting rid of this highly invasive species in the wild. They reproduce at pace! #TeamBob

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Time for another game of “Is it a shimmering pickle or a Beroe?” 🤭 #ctenophore

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Wonderful opportunity to work in the Cnido Lab at @ucsantacruz.bsky.social 🪼🪸 More info about joining the lab at: macias.sites.ucsc.edu/join/ #EvoDevo #EvoDevoJobs #DevBio #Evolution #Cnidarian #Jellyfish #Hydra

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

You don't have to go far to find alien life... Just look in our oceans 🪼 Enjoy these out-of-this-world, adult lobate comb jellies (Mnemiopsis leidyi) on #CtenophoreCtuesday! Credit video to Mari Bergsvåg & @joanjsoto.bsky.social at @unibergen.bsky.social ✨ #ctenophore #scicomm #combjelly #MarineLife

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

A throwback for Ctenophore Day! 🧪🐡🪼 If you ever wondered how to pronounce Ctenophore, today is October 4, the 10th month, fourth day and it sounds like ten oh four. They are a phylum of marine invertebrates, like this comb jelly which look a bit like jellyfish, but instead of stinging tentacles 🧵

This multimedia piece combines my linocut comb jelly on translucent Japanese paper, and self-flashing rgb LEDs to replicate their incredible bioluminescence. The translucent white comb jelly in in a dark blue glowing rectangle with two stripes of dashes along its body where changing coloured light glows through. There are white bubbles and part of two other comb jellies on the top and bottom edge of the box. It’s shot on a white background and is approximately 8”x10”2.5”

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"The fact I have now to report, Is one partly old, partly new, sirs; About a remarkable sort Of the ciliograde Medusas. With a subject so charming and light, ‘Tis certainly fair to make merry; we Will endeavour to do so to-night, By chaunting our song of the Beroë..." -Edward Forbes #CtenophoreDay

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Grey Eye Magpie @greyeyemagpie.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Coooooomb jelly Met this little idiot 20 feet from shore, lights rippling up and down its sides like a tiny spaceship the size of a sweet potato

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JA Fields | NonCompliantCyborg @noncompliantcyborg.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Happy #CtenophoreDay! 🦑🐙🧪 I’m an equal-opportunity cteno celebratory so I observe both October 4th and April 10th when it comes to appreciating our shared cousins that have been out doing their own thing for hundreds of millions of years.

You’re invited! To celebrate your most distant animal cousins you may not even have heard of… text is rainbow and surrounded by gooey transparent animals with rainbows running down their bodies

CTENOPHORES sometimes pronounced
"Ten-oh-fours
are phylum of marine invertebrates that use little plates of hair called ctenes to swim and/or create currents to bring food to them. Their beating ctenes bend the light, causing rainbows to dance down their body

We celebrate ctenophores on October 4th and on April 105) because their name sounds like 10/04 (ten oh four)

Participating in #Docktober on Ctenophore Day? Join the iNat project and add any ctenos you find from the docks. QR code linking to the project ctenophore day 2026 flanked by two photos of ctenos - a feather boa cydippid and a Haeckelia rubra

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Kevin Thiessen, PhD @kevinthiessen.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Happy #CtenophoreDay! These lab-grown comb jellies are giving off lava lamp vibes 😎 I often get entranced whenever I feed them 😍 #TeamBob #Bobettes #ctenophore #scicomm

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

October 4th (10/04 or "Ten-O-Four") is #CtenophoreDay for those that use the MM-DD format 🪼 Celebrate the occasion by sharing your favorite comb jelly photos and videos throughout the day! And don't forget to add the hashtag #CtenophoreDay to your posts 😊 #ctenophore #combjelly #scicomm #marinelife

A lobate comb jelly in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Photo: Chad King/NOAA

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Pawel Burkhardt @pawelburkhardt.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Happy #CtenophoreDay! Ctenophores are back. Freshly sampled Mnemiopsis leidyi from Sotra, Norway. These beautiful comb jellies continue to surprise us and are helping reveal new insights into the early evolution of nervous systems. 🌊✨ #CombJellies #Evolution #Neuroscience 1/2

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Elizabeth Beston @elizabethbeston.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

An absolutely chocker sample this week! Always lovely to see baby sea gooseberries! #marineplankton 🦑🔬

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Lisa @tuexplorer1.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Clip of Ctenophore when it had the feeding tentacles out & then schlurped them in. @noncompliantcyborg.bsky.social @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 963 #samplinggap #MarineLife

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Lisa @tuexplorer1.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Ctenophore giving you a taste of the rainbow @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 963 #samplinggap #MarineLife

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Tongue-tied? Maybe tentacle-tied! 🪼🪢🪼 These larval comb jellies (cydippids) got all tangled up after going for the same piece of food (now white debris in the middle of aggregate) 🤦‍♂️ Don’t worry though! It’s nothing a transfer pipette can’t solve 😊 #scicomm #mneniopsis #ctenophore #MarineLife

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Happy #CtenophoreCtuesday! We feel like spitting fun facts today 😎 DYK: upon fusion, two comb jellies undergo rapid physiological integration (e.g. demonstrated by shared neuronal and digestive systems) 🪼🔗🪼 Credit video to @kei-jokura.bsky.social. Read more about it: www.cell.com/current-biol... 🦑

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Here are some lab-grown comb jelly larvae to brighten your day 🪼 Despite the name, comb jellies are not true jellyfish as they lack stinging cells and, instead, have sticky cells! Credit video to @kevinthiessen.bsky.social. #CtenophoreFunFacts #ctenophore #combjelly #scicomm #TeamBob #MarineLife

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Cterrific video! Fun fact: Comb jellies are the largest animals to use cilia for locomotion 🤓 #CtenophoreFunFacts #ctenophore #MarineLife

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This is an amazing tool for serious outputs only! 🤭 #CtenophoresRock

Output from webapp spells Ctenophores Rock

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Cten days to go until #CtenophoreDay (10-04) 🪼 How will you be celebrating this tentacular event? #combjelly #ctenophore #scicomm #sciart #MarineLife #SciSky 📽️ @montereybayaquarium.org

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Kevin Thiessen, PhD @kevinthiessen.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

What I like best about this video is near the end when some of Bob’s progeny swim into view and they are hunting the rotifers as well. Can you spot them? 😍

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This is Bob. They are a hermaphroditic comb jelly that recently underwent reverse development from adult lobate to larval cydippid, following a period of stress. The event reduced our colony to just Bob. Once our food source stabilized, Bob began to flourish & what was 1 Bob is now 500+ Bobettes! 🦑

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Milo Imbeni @pyramidalmilo.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Lets go Bob my hero

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🍁 Alex Smith 🍁 @alexsmithants.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

So happy to be able to wear my newly arrived #ctenophore t-shirt in #ZOO3700 lecture today! Check them out! @elizabethbeston.bsky.social t supporting the Plankton Project theplanktonproject.teemill.com/collection/a...

screen grab of a lecture where there is a plot of host mass against parasite size and students have annotated their expectation. top right hand corner speaker is wearing snazzy ctenophore tshirt!

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Enjoy some lab-grown comb jellies (Mnemiopsis leidyi)! #MarineLife

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

New from Martindale Group at Whitney Lab: "Phagocytes in the mesoglea of the scyphozoan Cassiopea sp." 🪼🔬 #Cnidaria Highlights: • Identified mesogleal cells capable of bacterial phagocytosis • Phagocytosis dependent on actin, not microtubule polymerization 🔗: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Figure 2 from Miner et al. 2026. DIC and fluorescence images of isolated mesoglea. A-F) DIC images of isolated mesoglea. A-C) Symbiotic mesoglea. D-F) Aposymbiotic mesoglea. C) and F) Confocal maximum intensity projection of isolated mesoglea stained with phalloidin (yellow) and DAPI (cyan). Symbiont autofluorescence is in magenta. G-I) show DIC images of some of the cells of interest in this study, an amoebocyte (G), a mesogleal symbiocyte containing two symbionts (H), and some Symbiodiniaceae algae not contained in a host cell (I). Black arrows indicate amoebocytes, and white arrows indicate mesogleal symbiocytes

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

ICYMI... Plenty more comb jelly awesomeness in this @quantamagazine.org write-up by @mstarling.bsky.social 🪼 Link to free article: www.quantamagazine.org/ctenophores-... #ctenophore #MarineLife #SciComm

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Wonderful opportunity, especially for ECRs! Consider applying, if keen ⬇️

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Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Feeling jelly? You can get your own sea gooseberry shirt and support a wonderful cause at the same time! 🔗 to purchase: theplanktonproject.teemill.com/collection/a... #CtenoGear

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