The pink meanie was also featured on the front page of the Mobile Register in 2010 in an article by Ben Raines.īayha explains that as adults, pink meanies only eat other jellyfish with a preference for moon jellyfish. “We also named the Family Drymonematidae, amending the work done by Ernst Haeckel, contemporary of Charles Darwin and famous for his jellyfish illustrations.”īayha adds that naming the pink meanie after Larson was one of his memorable moments as a scientist, and Ron was extremely humble and thankful. “Larson was a colleague and all-around great person who used to collect specimens for the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and did research on the pink meanie in the Caribbean in the 1970s and 1980s,” Bayha explained. He named the new species Drymonema larsoni after Ron Larson. In a 2010 publication, Bayha and Michael Dawson described the Dymonema as a new family and the Gulf of Mexico pink meanies as a new species. “In that study, it became clear that Drymonema was a brand new family and very distinct from the Lion’s Mane Jellyfish,” Bayha said.īayha used DNA sequencing, morphology, and habitat information to determine the pink meanie was a new species and family. This pink meanie was spotted in the waters off Dauphin Island on Saturday, September 24, 2022. His study included specimens of the Gulf of Mexico pink meanie and Drymonema from the coast of Turkey. This study included sea nettles, lion’s mane jellyfish, and moon jellyfish. Then, when he was at the University of California Merced, he did an evolutionary study of the True Jellyfish ( Scyphozoa). I tried to use them for a study I was doing on the Lion’s Mane Jellyfish, whose family the pink meanie previously belonged to, but they were too different.”īayha worked at DISL from 2004 until 2007 but never saw a pink meanie during that time. Graham sent me samples for DNA analysis when I was a graduate student at the University of Delaware. “Pink meanies first started showing up in the northern Gulf of Mexico in the early 2000s and were recorded by Monty Graham at DISL,” Bayha said. Allen Collins.īayha offered a bit of a back story on how naming the jellyfish came to pass. He has continued some of his jellyfish work as a Research Collaborator at the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of Natural History in the lab of Dr. The scientific name is Drymonema larsoni, and was named by former DISL post-doctoral student Keith Bayha. Several of DISL's followers have even messaged to find out more. A pink blob floating in the waters off of Alabama is catching people's attention as they walk along the beach.
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