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A spongivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating animals of the phylum Porifera, commonly called sea sponges, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their diet, spongivore animals like the hawksbill turtle have developed sharp, narrow bird-like beak that allows them to reach within crevices on the reef to ...
They also produce toxins that prevent other sessile organisms such as bryozoans or sea squirts from growing on or near them, making sponges very effective competitors for living space. One of many examples includes ageliferin. A few species, the Caribbean fire sponge Tedania ignis, cause a severe rash in humans who handle them. [18]
Oligophagy is a term for intermediate degrees of selectivity, referring to animals that eat a relatively small range of foods, either because of preference or necessity. [2] Another classification refers to the specific food animals specialize in eating, such as: Carnivore: the eating of animals Araneophagy: eating spiders; Avivore: eating birds
Some sponges live to great ages; there is evidence of the deep-sea glass sponge Monorhaphis chuni living about 11,000 years. [ 213 ] [ 214 ] While most of the approximately 5,000–10,000 known species feed on bacteria and other food particles in the water, some host photosynthesizing micro-organisms as endosymbionts and these alliances often ...
Sponges have no nervous, digestive or circulatory system. Sponges are animals of the phylum Porifera (Modern Latin for bearing pores [26]). 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.
About 311 million years ago, in the Late Carboniferous, the order Spongillida split from the marine sponges, and is the only sponges to live in freshwater environments. [8] Some species are brightly colored, with great variety in body shape; the largest species are over 1 m (3.3 ft) across. [ 6 ]
In both the non-animals and the comb jellies, researchers found 14 groups of genes located on separate chromosomes. But in the sponges, researchers found that those 14 groups had been rearranged ...
An example of this is the sponge Astroclera willeyana which has a gene that is used in expressing spherulite-forming cells which has an origin in bacteria. Another example is the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis, which has genes from bacteria that have a role in producing UV radiation protection in the form of shikimic acid. Another ...