Spoop Jelly
Due to most organisms in zone 27 being pelagic swimmers or plankton, there were unfilled niches at its benthic zone, where marine snow and the corpse of dead organisms started gathering. Jelyshelydisulbula viscomavros, or the spoop jelly, is a descendant of Jelyshelydisulbula flexiglobulus that has evolved to fill the niche of a benthic detritivore/scavenger (while technically still being a pelagic swimmer).
The spoop jelly swims near the benthic zone of zone 27, where it searches the water for food such as marine snow, other dead jellies, pieces of macroplanktons, etc. Due to the inconsistency of food, however, it has developed a new feeding behavior. In passive feeding, it will passively strain differing amounts of food particles out of the water, using the contractions of the bubble membrane while swimming. If a greater amount of particles than normal passes through, an indicator of abundance of food, it will switch to a more active feeding behavior. In this, the membrane will expand away from the center of the jelly, creating a low pressure area that funnels food towards its mantle, while the tentacles extends outward. The tentacles will wrap around the food particles and retract to ingest it.
The retraction of the tentacles creates another low pressure vacuum that sucks more food towards themselves, while the membrane shoots forward, to capture more food, and then closes back into a bubble. The spoop jelly does not require N. protos’ antifreeze compounds anymore, since the bottom layers of polar water does not freeze over. The spoop jelly still grows to be 1-1.5 in. in diameter.
Spoop jellies are still hermaphrodites and reproduction is near identical to their ancestor: when 2 jellies meet, they face the openings of their bubbles toward each other and latch onto their mates where they will begin to exchange gametes. Unlike their ancestors, fertilized eggs are released near a food source since the new feeding behavior and potentially disturb and kill them either from stress or accidental squishings.
