comb jelly

• comb-jelly, combjelly

From their prominent bands of cilia, and their jelly-like texture and resemblance to jellyfish.

comb jelly (plural comb jellies)

1. A jelly-like marine animal of the phylum Ctenophora; a ctenophore.
   • 1870, William Dallas, translation of Ernst Haeckel, “On the Organization of Sponges, and their Relationship to the Corals”, The Annals and Magazine of Natural History, fourth series, volume 5, page 7:

     Comb-jellies (Ctenophoræ).

   • 1907, Buel P. Colton, Zoölogy, Heath, part 1, page 330:

     Ctenophora, the “comb jellies.”

   • 1976, Sears Crowell, “An Edwardsiid Larva Parasitic in Mnemiopsis”, Coelenterate Ecology and Behavior, Plenum, →ISBN, page 249:

     After contacting the surface of a comb jelly, a larva is often moved about by the comb plates and cilia of the host, but eventually it may stick at a comparatively undisturbed spot.

   • 2002, Olivia Judson, Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation, Metropolitan, →ISBN, page 56:

     Have you ever met a comb jelly, or ctenophore?

   • 2012, Charles Clover, ‘Up To Our Necks’, Literary Review, issue 399:

     Roberts catalogues the other man-made threats to life in the sea: the introduction of alien species by means of ballast water, such as the warty comb jellies that took over the Black Sea [...].