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Myocytes ("muscle cells") conduct signals and cause parts of the animal to contract. "Grey cells" act as sponges' equivalent of an immune system. Archaeocytes (or amoebocytes) are amoeba-like cells that are totipotent, in other words, each is capable of transformation into any other type of cell. They also have important roles in feeding and in ...
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 ...
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
Although all cells in a sponge are capable of living on their own, choanocytes carry out most of the sponge's ingestion, passing digested materials to the amoebocytes for delivery to other cells. Choanocytes can also turn into spermatocytes when needed for sexual reproduction, due to the lack of reproductive organs in sponges (amoebocytes ...
The choanocytes (also known as "collared cells") of sponges (considered among the most basal metazoa) have the same basic structure as choanoflagellates. Collared cells are found in other animal groups, such as ribbon worms, [38] suggesting this was the morphology of their last common ancestor.
A close relationship between choanoflagellates and animals has long been recognised, dating back at least to the 1840s.A particularly striking and famous similarity between the single-celled choanoflagellates and multicellular animals is provided by the collar cells of sponges and the overall morphology of the choanoflagellate cell.
Hexactinellid sponges are sponges with a skeleton made of four- and/or six-pointed siliceous spicules, often referred to as glass sponges. They are usually classified along with other sponges in the phylum Porifera , but some researchers consider them sufficiently distinct to deserve their own phylum, Symplasma .
' flat animals ') [3] is a phylum of free-living (non-parasitic) marine invertebrates. [4] [5] They are blob-like animals composed of aggregations of cells. Moving in water by ciliary motion, eating food by engulfment, reproducing by fission or budding, placozoans are described as "the simplest animals on Earth."