In contrast to higher metazoans such as copepods and fish, ctenophores are a basal metazoan lineage possessing a relatively narrow set of sensory-motor capabilities. Yet lobate ctenophores can capture prey at rates comparable to sophisticated predatory copepods and fish, and they are capable of altering the composition of coastal planktonic communities. Here, we demonstrate that the predatory s...

Cornelia Jaspers1,*, Matilda Haraldsson2, Sören Bolte3, Thorsten B. H. Reusch3, Uffe H. Thygesen1 and Thomas Kiørboe1 Centre for Ocean Life, DTU-Aqua, Technical University of Denmark, Kavalergården 6, 2920 Charlottenlund, Denmark Biological and Environmental Sciences, Gothenburg University, Kristineberg 566, 45178 Fiskebäckskil, Sweden Helmholtz-Centre for Ocean Research (GEOMAR), Düsternbrooke...

The traditional view has been that all species of the phylum Ctenophora are capable of producing light. Our inability to elicit luminescence from members of the well-known genus Pleurobrachia, as well as a lack of published documentation, led to an effort to determine whether this genus is truly bioluminescent. Physical and chemical assays of several species from the family Pleurobrachiidae pro...

The phylogenetic relationships of the Recent cnidarian classes remain one of the classic problems in invertebrate zoology. We survey the structure of the mitochondrial genome in representatives of the four extant cnidarian classes and in the phylum Ctenophora. We find that all anthozoan species tested possess mtDNA in the form of circular molecules, whereas all scyphozoan, cubozoan, and hydrozo...

Recent phylogenomic evidence suggests that ctenophores may be the sister group to the rest of animals. This phylogenetic arrangement opens the possibility that sponges and placozoans could have lost neural cell types or that the ctenophore nervous system evolved independently. We critically review evidence to date that has been put forth in support of independent evolution of neural cell types ...