Exumbrellar Surface of Jellyfish: A Comparative Fine Structure Study with Remarks on Surface Reflectance.

The exumbrellar surfaces of six pelagic cnidarians from three classes were ultra-structurally compared to reveal their structural diversity in relation to their gelatinous, transparent bodies. We examined two hydrozoans ( and ), a cubozoan (), and three scyphozoans (, , and ). The exumbrellar surfaces of the mesoglea in , , , and were covered with a simple epidermis; the shapes of the epidermal cells were remarkably different among the species. The epidermal cells of and possessed an array of microvilli on the apical side. The array possibly reduced light reflectance and provided some other surface properties, as seen for the cuticular nipple array in tunicates, considering the length, width, and pitch of the microvilli. The reduction of light reflectance on the array of microvilli was supported by the simulation with rigorous coupled wave analysis (RCWA). Microvilli were sparse and did not form an array in metephyrae of . The mesoglea matrix beneath the basal side of the epidermis was loose in all of the species. The exumbrellar side of the mesoglea was exposed only in the mesopelagic species, and , and electron-dense layer(s) covered the surface of the mesoglea. It is uncertain whether the exumbrellar epidermis is absent in these species or the epidermal cells are completely exfoliated during the sampling and handling processes. In the latter case, the electron-dense layer(s) on the mesoglea surface might originally underlie the epidermis.