Salp

A salp is a free-swimming, gelatinous marine tunicate that filters plankton from seawater. Many species alternate between solitary and chain-forming generations.

Filter feeding: Feeding by straining suspended particles from water or air. A salp's muscular contractions draw seawater through a mucus net that traps food.
Tunicate: A marine chordate whose body is covered by a tunic, often filtering food from water. Salps belong to this group, alongside sea squirts and larvaceans.
Biological carbon pump: The movement of carbon from surface waters into the ocean interior through biological processes. Salp feeding and sinking waste can carry plankton-derived carbon downward.
Jellyfish: Free-swimming gelatinous animals belonging to the cnidarians. Salps may resemble jellyfish, but they are chordate tunicates rather than cnidarians.
Mucus net: A mucus structure that captures suspended food particles from flowing water. Salps use this internal net to collect tiny plankton as water passes through the body.
Thaliacea: A class of planktonic tunicates that includes salps, doliolids, and pyrosomes. Salps are members of this free-swimming tunicate class.
Marine snow: Sinking aggregates of organic matter and other particles in the ocean. Salp fecal pellets can become rapidly sinking particles within marine snow.
Pyrosome: A colonial, free-swimming tunicate whose members form a hollow tube. Pyrosomes are related planktonic tunicates, but their colonies form tubes rather than salp chains.
Jet propulsion: Movement produced by expelling a directed stream of fluid. Water expelled during feeding also drives a salp forward.
Plankton: Organisms and particles that drift in water and cannot swim effectively against currents. Salps feed on plankton and themselves drift as part of plankton communities.

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Medusa (biology)Compared with: Salps can resemble gelatinous medusae but are chordates, not cnidarians.