White Spotted Jellyfish

Scientific Name

Phyllorhiza punctata von Lendenfeld 1884 (ITIS)

Common Name

White spotted jellyfish, Australian spotted jellyfish

Native To

Australia and the Philippines (Graham et al. 2003)

Date of U.S. Introduction

First discovered in 1981 in California (Carlton and Geller 1993)

Means of Introduction

Probably entered from the Pacific Ocean through the Panama Canal on the hulls of ships (Graham et al. 2003)

Impact

Preys on native species; negatively impacts shrimp industry by clogging nets and damaging fishing equipment (Ocaña-Luna et al. 2010)

Current U.S. Distribution

Southeastern U.S. coastal region

Australian spotted jellyfish

Credit

Photo by Harriet Perry; Gulf Coast Research Laboratory

Source

Find more images

The section below contains highly relevant resources for this species, organized by source.

Partnership

Global Invasive Species Database - Phyllorhiza punctata (jellyfish)
- IUCN. Species Survival Commission. Invasive Species Specialist Group.
Invasive Species Compendium - Phyllorhiza punctata
- CAB International.
The Quiet Invasion: A Guide to Invasive Species of the Galveston Bay Area - Australian Spotted Jellyfish
- Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Galveston Bay Estuary Program; Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC).
TISI Inventory - Australian Spotted Jellyfish
- Texas State University System. Texas Invasive Species Institute.
White-spotted jellyfish - Introduced Marine Species of Hawai'i
- Bishop Museum. Hawaii Biological Survey; University of Hawaii.

Federal Government

Professional

Citations

Carlton, J.T. and J.B. Geller. 1993. Ecological roulette: the global transport of nonindigenous marine organisms. Science 261:78-82.
Graham, W.M., D.L. Martin, D.L. Felder, V.L. Asper, and H.M. Perry. 2003. Ecological and economic implications of a tropical jellyfish invader in the Gulf of Mexico. Biological Invasions 5:53-69.
Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Phyllorhiza punctata. [Accessed Sep 28, 2023].
Ocaña-Luna, A., M. Sánchez-Ramírez, and R. Aguilar-Durán. 2010. First record of Phyllorhiza punctata von Lendenfeld, 1884 (Cnidaria: Scyphozoa, Mastigiidae) in Mexico. Aquatic Invasions 5(suppl. 1):S79-S84.