Does the Food Chain Stop At Jellyfish

The professor said that the exam was very difficult

The professor remarked that the exam was exceedingly challenging. a jellyfish buffet

If you’re at a restaurant and jellyfish is on the menu, you might opt for something else. Jellyfish are mostly made up of water, and don’t have much to offer in terms of nutrition. However, some species of sea turtles have been found to survive almost entirely on jellyfish, leaving scientists wondering how they can live on something so lacking in oomph.

It turns out that jellyfish provide some nutrients, but not all of them come from the jellyfish itself. Jellyfish primarily eat plankton and other small food sources, and their predators have been observed eating only the most nutritious parts of the jellyfish, often leaving behind the less nutritious upper Bell portion. This allows them to get up to five times more nutrients from their prey.

However, when jellyfish bloom, they can cause problems in the food web. If jellyfish are sequestering nutrients and energy in the environment, it could spell disaster for other organisms connected to them. Thankfully, marine scientists are using more sophisticated tools to observe and measure how nutrients are getting out of a jellyfish. Stable isotope analysis is an advanced tool that can help identify what kind of food sources make up an animal’s diet.