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There is a growing cause for concern on envenoming European species because of jellyfish blooms, climate change and globalization displacing species. Treatment of envenomation involves the prevention of further nematocyst release and relieving local and systemic symptoms. Many anecdotal treatments are available but species-specific first aid response is essential for effective treatment. However, species identification is difficult in most cases. There is evidence that oral analgesics, seawater, baking soda slurry and 42–45 °C hot water are effective against nematocyst inhibition and giving pain relief. The application of topical vinegar for 30 s is effective on stings of specific species. Treatments, which produce osmotic or pressure changes can exacerbate the initial sting and aggravate symptoms, common among many anecdotal treatments. Most available therapies are based on weak evidence and thus it is strongly recommended that randomized clinical trials are undertaken. We recommend a vital increase in directed research on the effect of environmental factors on envenoming mechanisms and to establish a species-specific treatment. Adequate signage on jellyfish stings and standardized first aid protocols with emphasis on protective equipment and avoidance of jellyfish to minimize cases should be implemented in areas at risk. Full article

The Aphia platform is an infrastructure designed to capture taxonomic and related data and information, and includes an online editing environment. The latter allows easy access to experts so they can update the content of the database in a timely fashion. Aphia is the core platform that underpins the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) and its more than 80 related global, regional and thematic species databases, but it also allows the storage of non-marine data. The content of Aphia can be consulted online, either by individual users or via machine-to-machine interactions. Aphia uses unique and stable identifiers for each available name in the database through the use of Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs). The system not only allows the storage of accepted and unaccepted names, but it also documents the relationships between names. This makes it a very powerful tool for taxonomic quality control, and also allows the linking of different pieces of information through scientific names, both within the Aphia platform and in relation to externally hosted databases. Through these LSIDs, Aphia has become an important player in the field of (marine) biodiversity informatics, allowing interactions between its own taxonomic data and e.g., biogeographic databases. Some applications in the field of biodiversity informatics encompass the coupling of species traits and taxonomy, as well as the creation of diverse, expert validated data products that can be used by policy makers, for example. Aphia also supplies (part of) its content to other data integrators and the infrastructure can be used to host orphan databases in danger of being lost. Full article