These sponge areas have been damaged by fishing gear in many areas and therefore there is an on-going project to map and protect the remaining areas. These increase the habitat diversity on the bottom and this in turn increases species diversity. The first is because sponges can cover large areas on the continental shelf. Recently interest in sponges has increases greatly for two reasons. However, one should not use Icelandic waters sponges for these purposes as they contain many needle like spicules that can irritate the skin badly. Nowadays plastics have mostly replaced them. Previously, common bathroom sponges were made from certain species of warm water marine sponges. To identify the species a specialist is needed to look at the internal structure in a microscope. However, it is very difficult to identify sponges to species because there can be a great variation within each species and many species are similar as well. Many sponge species live in Icelandic waters and they are especially conspicuous on hard bottoms 12. They filter out small food particles by other specialized cells before ejecting the seawater through larger openings. Small cells, called choanocytes, synchronously wave their flagella within the sponge and therefore draw seawater through tiny pores into the sponge. Some species are erect and branch out like plants.Īll sponges are filter feeders. Sponges cannot move at all and can look like mats or spongy balls. However, they do have specialized cells that have different roles within the sponge. They lack all internal organs, a neural system and sensory organs and look a bit like a colony of single celled animals. They are in fact the most primitive of the multicellular animals. Sponges are probably the least animal-like of all animals.
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