Sponges, the members of the phylum Porifera are a basal animal clade as a sister of the diploblasts. They are multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through them, consisting of jelly-like mesohyl sandwiched between two thin layers of cells.
Isopoda is an order of crustacean, which includes woodlice and their relatives. Members of this group are called Isopods and include both terrestrial and aquatic species. All have rigid, segmented exoskeletons, two pairs of antennae, seven pairs of jointed limbs on the thorax, and five pairs of branching appendages on the abdomen that are used in respiration. Females brood their young in a pouch under their thorax.
The Eltanin Antenna is an object photographed on the sea floor by the Antarctic oceanographic research ship USNS Eltanin in 1964, while photographing the sea bottom west of Cape Horn.
A salp or salpa is a barrel-shaped, planktonic tunicate in the family Salpidae. It moves by contracting, thereby pumping water through its gelatinous body; one of the most efficient examples of jet propulsion in the animal kingdom. The salp strains the pumped water through its internal feeding filters, feeding on phytoplankton.
Cladorhiza is a genus of carnivorous sponges, comprising around 40 species found in oceans around the world. Cladorhiza is the type genus of the family Cladorhizidae.
Zhemchug Canyon is an underwater canyon located in the Bering Sea between the Siberian and Alaskan coastlines. It is the deepest submarine canyon in the world with a vertical relief of 8,530 feet and a length of 99 miles . The submarine canyon is renowned for its extraordinary size, hosting a unique marine environment because of its substantial size. It forms a significant portion of the Bering Sea’s ecosystem, contributing to its biological productivity and natural habitat for a diverse range of marine species.
Chondrocladia is a genus of carnivorous demosponges of the family Cladorhizidae. Neocladia was long considered a junior synonym, but recently become accepted as a distinct genus.
Marine invertebrates are the invertebrates that live in marine habitats. Invertebrate is a blanket term that includes all animals apart from the vertebrate members of the chordate phylum. Invertebrates lack a vertebral column, and some have evolved a shell or a hard exoskeleton. As on land and in the air, marine invertebrates have a large variety of body plans, and have been categorised into over 30 phyla. They make up most of the macroscopic life in the oceans.
Homosclerophorida is an order of marine sponges. It is the only order in the monotypic class Homoscleromorpha. The order is composed of two families: Plakinidae and Oscarellidae.
Aplysina archeri, also known as a stove-pipe sponge because of its shape, is a species of tube sponge that has long tube-like structures of cylindrical shape. Although they can grow in a single tube, they often grow in large groups of up to 22 tubes. A single tube can grow up to 5 feet (1.5 m) high and 3 inches (7.6 cm) thick. These sponges mostly live in the Western Atlantic Ocean: the Caribbean, The Bahamas, Florida, and Bonaire. Like most sponges, they are filter feeders; they eat food such as plankton or suspended detritus as it passes them. Very little is known about their behavioral patterns except for their feeding ecology and reproductive biology. Tubes occur in varying colors including lavender, pink, gray, and brown. They reproduce both by asexual and sexual reproduction. These sponges take hundreds of years to grow and never stop growing until they die. Snails are among their natural predators. The population density of these sponges is decreasing because of oil spills and other pollution.
Amphimedon compressa, the erect rope sponge, red tree sponge, red tubular sponge, or red sponge is a demosponge found in southern Florida, the Caribbean Sea, and the Bahamas. It can be deep red, orange, brown, or black.
Euplectella is a genus of glass sponges which includes the well-known Venus' Flower Basket. Glass sponges have a skeleton made up of silica spicules that can form geometric patterns. These animals are most commonly found on muddy sea bottoms in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans. They are sessile organisms and do not move once attached to a rock. They can be found at depths between 100 m and 1000 m but are most commonly found at depths greater than 500 m.
Chondrocladia lyra, also known as the lyre sponge or harp sponge, is a species of carnivorous deep-sea sponge first discovered off the Californian coast living at depths of 10,800–11,500 feet (3,300–3,500 m) by Welton L. Lee, Henry M Reiswig, William C. Austin, and Lonny Lundsten from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI).
Cladorhizidae is a family of carnivorous demosponges found in deep-sea environments worldwide. These sponges are known for their unique feeding structures and predatory behavior, as they capture and consume small animals such as crustaceans.
Cladorhiza caillieti is a carnivorous sponge of the family Cladorhizidae described in 2014 from specimens collected from the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the coast of Vancouver Island. It feeds on small crustaceans such as amphipods and copepods. C. caillieti is an elongate, bottlebrush-shaped sponge with filaments projecting from a main stem, and ranges from 7 to 9 cm in height. The specific epithet honors Dr. Gregor M. Cailliet of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories.
Aplysina fistularis, also known as the yellow tube sponge or yellow sponge , is a species of sea sponge in the order Verongiida. Aplysina fistularis is a golden or orange-brown color with a conulose surface. The animal is abundant in the Caribbean, where it is commonly found in reefs of open water areas. This sponge was first described by the Prussian zoologist Peter Simon Pallas in 1766.
Nicole Boury-Esnault is a retired French researcher of sponges, formerly at Centre d'Océanologie de Marseille, Aix-Marseille University.
Jean Vacelet is a French marine biologist who specialises in the underwater fauna of the Mediterranean. After earning his licence at the Faculté des Sciences de Marseille and learning to dive in 1954, he specialised in the study of sponges at the Marine station of Endoume, and there he has stayed faithful to both sponges and place for more than half a century. His research has included all aspects of sponges: taxonomy, habitat, biology, anatomy, their bacterial associations, and their place in the evolution of multi-celled animals. He has studied them not only in the Mediterranean but in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Exploration of underwater grottoes, together with Jacques Laborel and Jo Hamelin, revealed the existence of sponges dating from very ancient geological periods and the unexpected existence of carnivorous sponges, and surprisingly, the grottoes in some ways mimicked life at much greater depths.
Bolosoma is a genus of pedunculated siliceous sponges belonging to the family Euplectellidae. This genus lives in deep-sea environments and provides a habitat for a plethora of other benthic species, giving Bolosoma an incredibly important ecological role in the ecosystems it is a part of.
Abyssocladia is a genus of the family Cladorhizidae, a family of carnivorous sponges. It is made up of at least 39 species found in oceans all over the world.
