Status and diversity of Jellyfishes around Indian Coastal waters

Jellyfish is a common word used for any gelatinous animal in marine waters. These include a wide variety of stinging and non-stinging jellyfishes. Jellyfishes are the oldest animal on planet earth from Pre-Cambrian period, and passed through 500 million years of natural selection. The term jellyfish generally refers to gelatinous zooplankton including medusae of the phylum Cnidaria(scyphomedusae, hydromedusae, cubomedusae and siphonophores) and planktonic members of the phylum Ctenophora, Salps and Pyrosomes etc. The true jellyfishes are coming under the three Cnidarian classes viz., Hydrozoa, Scyphozoa and Cubozoa and seasonally swarm in the coastal waters.