Sponges
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Introduction
• Phylum Porifera
“pore bearer”
• Aquatic and mostly
marine
• Sessile
• Body can be stony,
rubbery, or gelatinous
• Size range: few
millimeters to five meters
• Radially symmetric or
asymmetrical
Odyssey Expeditions - Sponges
Jason Buchheim
Jason Buchheim
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Structure
• Simplest form resembles a tube closed at
the attached end and open at the other.
• Outer surface is called the pinacoderm
(made up of pinacocyte cells)
• Pinacoderm has many porocytes (pores)
which allow water to enter the sponge
wall.
• The atrium opens to the outside through
the osculum (large opening at top)
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Structure
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Structure
• Beneath the pinacoderm is the mesohyl
(gelatinous matrix that contains support
structures and amoebocytes)
• Body supported by calcareous or siliceous
spicules (needle, rod, star shaped) and/or
spongin fibers
• Atrium wall consists of choanocytes which
create a flow of water through the sponge by
beating their flagella
• As water flows in the amoebocytes pick up and
distributes nutrients to the sponge.
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Spicule
Structure
Spongin
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Feeding
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Water flow created by choanocytes
Water enters porocyte
Nutrients picked up by amoebocytes
Waste products deposited in water flow
Water enters atrium
Flow carries waste materials and water out
the osculum
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Feeding
Choanocyte
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Reproduction
• Many can regenerate
• Asexual and sexual reproduction
• Asexual by fragmentation and
budding
• Sexual: Hermaphroditic
• Most fertilization is external
• Larvae is free swimming and
attaches to a suitable hard
surface after a few hours to
several days later (two types)
• Changes into a sponge
Odyssey Expeditions - Sponges
Parenchymella
Larvae
Amphiblastula
Larvae
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Reproduction
Releasing gametes
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Economic
• Harvested for bath sponges
• Anticancer biochemicals
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Body Types
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Asconoid (simplest)
Syconoid
Leuconoid (most complex)
Body wall folding is the main difference between
body types
• Body folding increases surface area:
– Increases choanocyte layer and reduces the amount
of water needed to filter
– Increased turbulance puts more food in contact with
amoebocytes
– Enables the sponge to grow large because of the
added nutrition
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Asconoid
• Simplest in form
• Cylindrical in shape
• No body wall folding
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Syconoid
• More complex than
asconoid
• Mostly cylindrical in
shape
• Some body wall folding
• Increase # of
choanocytes
Odyssey Expeditions - Sponges
Flagellated
chamber
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Leuconoid
• Most complex
• Varied in shape
• Extreme body wall
folding
• Greatly increases #
of choanocytes
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Sponge Classes
• Class Calcarea
• Class Hexactinellida
• Class Demospongiae
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Class Calcarea
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Spicules composed of calcium carbonate
No spongin
Entirely marine
Usually found in shallow water
All three body types
Typically less than 10 cm in height
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Calcarea
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Class Hexactinellida
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Called glass sponges
Siliceous spicules
Most symmetrical looking sponges
Cup, vase, or urn-like in shape
10-30cm in height
Inhabit deep water: 200m to 1000m
Dominant sponge in the arctic
Leuconoid body type
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Hexactinellida
NOAA
NOAA
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Odyssey Expeditions - Sponges
NOAA
Class Demospongiae
• Siliceous spicules and/or spongin fibers
• Most are marine, FW sponges belong to
this class
• 90% of sponges
• Leuconoid body type
• Inhabit shallow to deep water
• Irregular in shape
• Bath sponges belong in this class
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Demospongiae
Jason Buchheim
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The End
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Resources
•
Barnes, Robert D. and Edward Ruppert. Invertebrate Zoology: Sixth Edition.
Fort Worth: Saunders College Publishing, 1994
•
BIODIDAC: A Bank of Digital Resources For Teaching Biology. 20 Dec.
2006. <http://biodidac.bio.uottawa.ca/>
•
Kinsella, John, Drew Richardson and Bob Wohlers. Life on an Ocean
Planet. California: Current Publishing Corp., 2006
•
Taylor, Walter K. and Robert L. Wallace. Invertebrate Zoology: A
Laboratory Manual Sixth Edition. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002
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