Ctenophores, also called comb jellies, include species that look much like jellyfish: mostly transparent, often very thin and fragile, and floating in the water like plankton or standard jellyfish. However, they are not included in the phylum that contains jellyfish and corals; instead their anatomy places them in a phylum of their own, the Ctenophora. The planktonic ctenophores are characterized by eight bands of ciliated comb plates, seen as the dashed rows in the two different species below. There are also benthic species of ctenophores, which resemble flatworms but usually have long threadlike and sometimes branching filaments extending from the body.
Created 20 October 2015