Animalia > Ctenophora > Tentaculata > Cydippida > Mertensiidae > Mertensia > Mertensia ovum

Mertensia ovum (Sea walnut)

Synonyms: Beroe octoptera; Beroe ovum; Cydippe ovum; Martensia octoptera; Mertensia cucullus

Wikipedia Abstract

Mertensia ovum aka the Arctic comb jelly or Sea Nut, is a cydippid comb jelly or ctenophore first described as Beroe ovum by Johan Christian Fabricius in 1780. Unusually among ctenophores, which normally prefer warmer waters, it is found in the Arctic and adjacent polar seas, mostly in surface waters down to 50 metres (160 ft). A study in the Barents Sea found that it ingests prey ranging from small copepods to amphipods and krill, but that its staple diet consists of large copepod species such as Calanus finmarchicus, Calanus glacialis, Calanus hyperboreus and Metridia longa.
View Wikipedia Record: Mertensia ovum

Prey / Diet

Calanus finmarchicus[1]
Calanus glacialis[1]
Calanus hyperboreus[1]
Metridia longa[1]

Predators

Anarhichas denticulatus (Northern wolffish)[1]
Melanogrammus aeglefinus (Smokie)[1]
Sebastes mentella (Redfish)[1]
Somniosus microcephalus (gray shark)[1]
Squalus acanthias (Common spiny)[1]

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
1Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0