''Praya'' is a genus of marine

invertebrate Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate s ...

s in the order

Siphonophorae Siphonophorae (from Ancient Greek σίφων (siphōn), meaning "tube" and -φόρος (-phóros), meaning "bearing") is an order within Hydrozoa, a class of marine organisms within the phylum Cnidaria. According to the World Register of Marin ...

. They are colonial, but the colonies can superficially resemble

jellyfish Jellyfish, also known as sea jellies or simply jellies, are the #Life cycle, medusa-phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, which is a major part of the phylum Cnidaria. Jellyfish are mainly free-swimming marine animal ...

; although they appear to be a single

organism An organism is any life, living thing that functions as an individual. Such a definition raises more problems than it solves, not least because the concept of an individual is also difficult. Many criteria, few of them widely accepted, have be ...

, each specimen is actually a colony of Siphonophora. It contains the following species: * ''

Praya dubia ''Praya dubia'', the giant siphonophore, lives in the mesopelagic zone to bathypelagic zone at to below sea level. It has been found off the coasts around the world, from Iceland in the North Atlantic to Chile in the South Pacific. ''Praya dub ...

'' ( Quoy &

Gaimard Joseph Paul Gaimard (31 January 1793 – 10 December 1858) was a French naval surgeon and naturalist. Biography Gaimard was born at Saint-Zacharie on January 31, 1793. He studied medicine at the naval medical school in Toulon, subsequent ...

in de Blainville, 1830) * '' Praya reticulata'' (Bigelow, 1911)

References

* Prayidae Hydrozoan genera Bioluminescent cnidarians {{Siphonophorae-stub