Freshwater Jellyfish Have Readily Established Themselves in Our Lakes

The species is thought to be native to the Yangtze River basin in China, and its first observation in Europe was in 1880 from an ornamental pond in London. Since then, it has spread widely, aided in part by its hidden mode of dispersal: its tiny polyp stage and resistant podocyst stage can be transported attached to aquatic plants, birds or submerged surfaces. Observations are made almost exclusively during mass occurrences of the medusa stage. According to the researchers, it is precisely the difficult-to-detect spread and observation that makes it particularly important for the species to receive greater public attention.