Talk:Medusa (biology)

Untitled
Does anyone know the difference between a Medusa and a Polyp?
 * As I understand it, a polyp is the form that attaches to a surface, while a medusa is the form that is free-floating; a given species of cnidarian takes each form in a different phase of its life. See Cnidaria (toward the end of the section) for a short explanation.--ragesoss 03:50, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

merge
propose merge into jellyfish. Cesiumfrog (talk) 01:40, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Or, perhaps, why not rather merge jellyfish into medusa (biology) with redirect, or, perhaps better, merge most of jellyfish into medusa and keep only the "jellyfishy" parts (like "Relationship to humans") in jellyfish. I think it is best to keep the scientific part on the scientific side, as medusa is one of the two lifeforms of cnidarians, which would make the biological terminology less "messy". --Episcophagus (talk) 17:59, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd rather not see two articles on the same topic. That would be a WP:POVFORK. Especially if outsetting deliberately to cover it from two different slants (one scientific, one not). I do acknowledge that a common term "jellyfish" has been co-opted by a small specialist group to dictate a somewhat arbitrarily restricted meaning; perhaps the title jellyfish should not be more than a disambiguation page? Cesiumfrog (talk) 22:29, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
 * But Medusa is a "larger concept" than "jellyfish". Check out Hydrozoa. Regards --Episcophagus (talk) 22:21, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Currently the primary topic of article "jellyfish" is precisely "medusa jellyfish". This includes the individual medusa life stage of any cnidarian. It excludes non-medusa life stages (e.g. polyps even of the same species, except in so far as to explain where the medusa come from), colonial forms (e.g. bluebottle/manowar), ctenophores ("combjellys"), and other gelatinous zooplankton (e.g. salps). In particular, it already does include hyrdozoan medusae (and is not limited to the scyphozoans which some refer to exclusively as the "true jellyfish"). So I do think merging jellyfish->here is currently feasible. I don't understand what you mean about larger concept; how would you define medusa and jellyfish? Cesiumfrog (talk) 23:07, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
 * "Jellyfish" does not cover the medusoid stage of many Hydrozoans. From Hydrozoa: "Although most hydrozoans have a medusoid stage, this is not always free-living, and in many species, exists solely as a sexually reproducing bud on the surface of the hydroid colony." From Cnidaria: "In some species the medusae remain attached to the polyp and are responsible for sexual reproduction; in extreme cases these reproductive zooids may not look much like medusae." "Jellyfish" is a trivial term, and thus undefined and fuzzy (just like "shrimp", "moth", "snail", "bug", gnat, midge, vegetable...), and from a biological point of view it is worth close to nothing. --Episcophagus (talk) 19:35, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Your own quote (from WP? that's your source?) is acknowledging that some hydrozoans do have free living medusa life stages (and various external sources do define jellyfish in a manner which covers these). I'm not clear if you are even proposing any edit here now. Cesiumfrog (talk) 08:09, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I refer back to my first post: "I think it is best to keep the scientific part on the scientific side, as medusa [not jellyfish!] is one of the two lifeforms of cnidarians". And when it comes to references - no WP isn't my primary reference personally (I'm a biologist since well back in the previous millennium), however I think that it is good if the articles on WP are coherent and non-contradictionary. --Episcophagus (talk) 20:05, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Currently WP has two articles on the topic of medusa jellyfish. Medusa (biology) is this one; Jellyfish is the other. I think these should be merged into a single article, which should be titled "Medusa jellyfish" to avoid any further ambiguity. Furthermore, I think it should have a hatnote saying "For similar marine animals, see gelatinous zooplankton. For other meanings see Jellyfish (disambiguation)."

As it presently stands, this one is just a stub anyway. It is completely unreferenced (contrary to core WP:V policy). Most of it is just a gallery anyway, which WP:IG policy discourages. Whatever topics might be covered here are presently already given better coverage on the jellyfish page, so frankly the continuing existence of this stub is a navigational obstruction.

Having referred back to your first posts, it seemed that your objection presumed (mistakenly) that the jellyfish article exclusively covered scyphomedusae. I also want to note that while you find the term "jellyfish" fuzzy, others have defined it precisely. Besides, by instead favouring the intuitive and precise term "medusa jellyfish" we can have the best of both worlds. I'm not sure what field of biologist you assert yourself to be, but I'd like to point out there verifiably are topic-experts who use "jellyfish" to include hydrozoan medusa. (I would be more sympathetic to a discussion of merging or not with medusozoa; I acknowledge it is a bit unfortunate that medusa do not perfectly coincide with any biological clade. However, like discussed in that external source, this is pretty much just the inherent nature of it.)

Your suggestion that two articles be kept to cover the same topic from different points of view is highly irregular, conflicts with WP:POVFORK guideline, and IMO worsens the encyclopedia because readers will tend to encounter one lopsided presentation (and each will be maintained much less efficiently than would be the case if combined, and not unlikely create mutual contradictions). I think it would be a particularly poor division to try to separate what you call "jellyfishy" (the content on fisheries, toxicity, research and aquaria) from the rest of the material about the same thing (ecology, anatomy, reproduction, systematics), and I still don't feel I grok your motivation for proposing it. Perhaps you would clarify what is the contradiction you claim to see? Cesiumfrog (talk) 23:57, 5 November 2012 (UTC)


 * "Your suggestion that two articles be kept" - which I didn't! I originally said "why not rather merge jellyfish into medusa (biology)", or... - if not at least keep the "jellyfishy" part away from the biological part. Please, be honest! --Episcophagus (talk) 22:21, 9 November 2012 (UTC)