Irish naturalist Maude Delap made an important contribution to science, writes Nigel Monaghan
For some they are objects of fear and loathing, but for Maude Delap jellyfish were a lifelong fascination. And working from a home-made laboratory at her house on Valentia Island, off Co Kerry, this self-taught amateur naturalist helped to unravel their puzzling life-cycle. There is even a rare species of jellyfish named in her honour.
Delap's is a story about scientific curiosity and experiment, but also unrequited love and how the conventions of the day restricted women's lives and ambitions. And it is an inspiring story, literally, for it prompted artist Dorothy Cross to collaborate with her brother, UCC marine biologist Prof Tom Cross, in an unusual art-science project, Medusae. The resulting video opens on July 12th, appropriately at the Natural History Museum, Dublin, where Delap contributed many specimens.
But why jellyfish? The trouble with these diaphanous creatures is that they can be shape-shifters, taking one or other of two forms. Some species spend all their life as free-swimming jellyfish or "medusa", some switch and spend part of their life-cycle stuck to rocks as "anemones" (the hydra life-form), and yet other species spend all their time as hydra and never become medusae.
For a long time it was not known which hydra went with which medusa, or it was thought the various hydrae and medusae were different species. The work of untangling these creatures continues today, but in the early 1900s Maude Delap identified several species in rearing experiments at her home.
This indefatigable naturalist was born in Co Donegal in 1866, the seventh of 10 children. When she was eight, the family moved to Valentia, where her father, Rev Alexander Delap, was appointed rector. Valentia was then home to a transatlantic telegraph station and a meteorological centre.
Partly due to the Delap family's work on Valentia's flora and fauna, English scientists chose the island for a detailed marine study in 1895. Nine scientists, led by Edward Browne from University College London, spent the summer collecting specimens there, aided by Maude and her sister Constance, who rowed around the coast trawling for samples with a net. After the expedition left, the sisters continued collecting for several years, sending more than 100 specimens to Browne. The 188-page survey report, published by the Royal Irish Academy in 1899, acknowledges the vital role the Delap sisters played.
The survey introduced Maude Delap to organised scientific research, and three years later she began her own complex experiments rearing jellyfish and anemones.
Her many discoveries meant that several species were reassigned, and among other things, she discovered that two hydroids, Laodicea undulata and Dipleurosoma typicum, were species of Cuspidella. In 1928 she was honoured by her scientific colleagues when a rare sea anemone she found near Valentia was named Edwardsia delapiae in her honour. On the strength of her research Delap was offered a job at the Marine Biology Station in Plymouth, but her father apparently said that "No daughter of mine will leave home, except as a married woman."
Delap remained on Valentia and continued her research. She collected numerous specimens for the Natural History Museum in Dublin, corresponding with scientists there, in England and elsewhere, and was an official recorder of whale strandings for the British Museum. In the 1920s she found the first complete True's beaked whale, stranded on the Kerry coast. This skilful observer and natural experimenter learned much from what was fetched up by the tides and the Atlantic storms. She is buried on Valentia, where she died in 1953.
Visit the Natural History Musuem (www.museum.ie), to see Delap's contributions (including a turtle and the skull of a whale), and for Dorothy Cross's video, Medusae, which is being screened there from July 12th to 29th.