A biology professor at Montclair State University, Paul Bologna, confirmed in a comment he wrote on Schenker's post that the creatures she spotted were actually
porpita porpita, or the blue button jellyfish.
According to Suad, the most challenging piece to make was
Porpita porpita, which was inspired by a picture of a blue marine organism that she saved for future inspiration.
A large proportion of these prey are cnidarians (Richardson and McGillivary, 2001; Witherington, 2002; Parker et al., 2005; Boyle and Limpus, 2008), including wind-driven jellyfishes that are primarily blue or violet in color such as the Portuguese man of war (Physalia physalis), blue button (
Porpita porpita), and by-the wind sailor (Velella velella).
Specimens of Chrysaora quinquecirrha (Desor, 1848) (Class Scyphozoa), Physalia physalis (Linnaeus, 1758), Porpita porpita (Linnaeus, 1758) Cladonema (sp.) (Class Hydrozoa), Chiropsalmus (sp).
In Chrysaora, Cladonema, Physalia, and Porpita, the staining was particularly dense with the anti-FMRFa antibody.
In the two siphonophore species examined, Porpita and Physalia, the tentacles bear large assemblies of cnidocytes, called cnidosacs, that appear as a line of hemispheres or spheres arranged along one edge of each tentacle.
The cnidosacs in Porpita were small enough to be fully reconstructed from confocal optical slices and provided a measure of the overall density of sensory neurons.
In Physalia, the cnidosacs are more hemispherical and the ectoderm thinner than Porpita. When cnidosacs were viewed from the surface, a dense plexus of immunoreactivity surrounding the dark cores of the cnidocytes was apparent (Fig.
Irrespective of the organization of the cnidocytes, be they in small planar clumps (Chrysaora), broad circumtentacular bands (Chiropsalmus), single capitate bulbs (Cladonema), or the linear arrangement of nearly cnidosacs found in Physalia and Porpita, a dense plexus of FMRFamide IR neurons is present around the base of the cnidocytes.