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Sea sponge moving
Sea sponge moving




sea sponge moving sea sponge moving

What’s more, the team said this mucus-rich material is subsequently fed upon by other creatures. “That’s something we have never seen before,” said Prof Sally Leys, a sponge expert at the University of Alberta and co-author of the research. When the sponge sneezes, this particle-rich mucus is ejected into the surroundings. The team say this mucus forms highways across the sponge, intercepting and moving particles on the surface in the process, resulting in the formation of stringy clumps.

sea sponge moving

Writing in the journal Current Biology, De Goeij and colleagues reported how they found the Caribbean stovepipe sponge, Aplysina archeri, has a constant stream of mucus flowing out of its pores against the feeding current – not unlike a runny nose – carrying particles with it. Water, containing nutrients, enters the organism through tiny pores and is filtered, with excess water and waste materials discharged into a central cavity from which they are expelled through a single opening, called the osculum.īut the latest study suggests there is another waste disposal system at play. Sponges are a little like chimneys, in that they have long been thought to operate a one-way system. “We found a lot of the material … to be probably inorganic particles, meaning sand, sediment, things that the sponge cannot use that are only maybe clogging the system and it needs to get rid of,” De Goeij said. Now they have found the contractions are involved in an unexpected form of waste disposal.ĭr Jasper de Goeij, a marine biologist at the University of Amsterdam and the senior author of the paper, said the team made their discovery while examining timelapse videos of sponges in a bid to understand how the creatures poo.






Sea sponge moving