Upside-down Jellyfish as a Bio-indicator of Pollution in the Indian River Lagoon

Upside-down jellyfish (Cassiopea xamancha) are found in South Florida and in found our shallow coastal waters among seagrass beds and mangrove swamps. Interestingly, the species range is being observed to migrate northward in the Indian River Lagoon. While climate change might be a factor, there may be other reasons as well. Furthermore, in the Caribbean, they have been used as an indicator for changes in water quality, like pollution. Citizen science efforts in the IRL are helping track this migration, contributing to the understanding of this unique Lagoon denizen.
Dr. Marie Strader is a University of Texas A&M marine scientist studying Cassiopea. Her lab has created a citizen science project to monitor the species' migration in Florida.
Marie Strader's lab studies how ecological and evolutionary processes play out in response to human induced changes in the environment. Her research aims to establish links between genotype and phenotype that will aid in predicting ecological and evolutionary trajectories of marine invertebrate taxa. She aims to uncover mechanistic understanding of how marine invertebrates persist in rapidly changing habitats.
Dr. Natalia Lopez Figueroa, our co-speaker, is a 2025–26 Gulf Science Policy Fellow with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. She earned her Ph.D. in Marine Science from the University of South Florida (USF), where her dissertation focused on the ecology of upside-down jellyfish (Cassiopea spp.) and their potential as bioindicators of nutrient enrichment in Jobos Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Puerto Rico. She has also worked with the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Gulf Shellfish Institute, the USF Institute of Marine Remote Sensing, and the Marine Megafauna Foundation.