Table of Contents
The most important structure is the system of canals and chambers, called a water-current system, through which water circulates to bring food and oxygen to the sponge. The water-current system also helps disperse gametes and larvae and remove wastes.
How does a sponge defend itself?
As sessile animals, sponges are vulnerable to a variety of predators. The pointed sponge spicules function as one method of defense against predators. Sponges also defend themselves by producing chemically active compounds. Many of these chemicals have been isolated and studied by scientists.
How does water move inside sponges What is the function of the pores in these animals?
What is the function of the pores in these animals? Sponges are filtering organisms. They make water enter their bodies through their lateral pores. Water then circulates inside the central cavity and exits through the osculum.
Why are sponges important to oceans?
Sponge grounds add structural complexity to those areas in the deep-sea where they occur, providing habitat and refugia to commercially important species, supporting food webs, and maintaining deep-sea biodiversity.
How do sponges get rid of waste?
Sponges have small pores in the body walls through which water is drawn, and larger openings (usually near the top of the sponge) for exhalent currents. Sponges use the water current and the process of diffusion to absorb oxygen from the water and to get rid of their metabolic waste products.
What helps circulate water through a sponge?
The inner layer consists of collar cells (A) whose function is to circulate water through the sponge. They do this by swishing their flagella which pulls water through the incurrent pore – water then travels out the osculum at the top of the sponge.
What regulates water flow into and out of sponges?
Porocytes control the flow of water through pores in the sponge body.
What is the function of pores in the body of sponges?
In addition to the osculum, sponges have multiple pores called ostia on their bodies that allow water to enter the sponge. In some sponges, ostia are formed by porocytes: single, tube-shaped cells that act as valves to regulate the flow of water into the spongocoel.
How do sponges move?
It’s a cell that has three basic parts: flagella, collar, and cell body. Sponges use the flagella to move when they are larvae. The flagella and collar work together to gather food. Sponges even use the choanocyte when it’s time to reproduce.
What adaptations do sponges have?
Certain sponge species are adapted to freshwater environments. Their skeleton types allow them to live in either hard or soft sediments. Their pores allow them to filter the water around them for food. Inside the sponge, there are flagella that create currents so their collar cells may trap the food.
How does a sponge move water through its body quizlet?
Water enters the sponge through the pore cells. The inner body wall consists of choanocytes (collar cells). Choanocytes are flagellated cells. They whip their flagella constantly to create a current which pulls water into the sponge through the pore cells.
Who eats sponges?
Two organisms that eat sponges though are hawksbill sea turtles and nudibranchs. Some nudibranchs will even absorb a sponge’s toxin while it eats it and then uses the toxin in its own defense.
What do sponges do?
As water filters through a sponge’s porous exterior, the sponge gains some motion, receives food and oxygen, and dispels waste. Inside the sponge, tiny hairlike structures called flagella create currents to filter bacteria out of the sponge’s cells and trap food within them.
Can sponges coordinate their various functions?
Answer: Coordination by external factors: Sponges do not have nerve cells to coordinate body functions. Mostly individual cells show response to a stimulus.
Which cells are responsible for drawing the water into the sponge?
Porocytes control the amount of water that enters pores into the spongocoel, while choanocytes, which are flagellated cells, aid the movement of water through the sponge, thereby helping the sponge to trap and ingest food particles.
What do spicules do in sponges?
Tiny spicules help make the sponge’s body rigid. They interlock to provide support like the bones in familiar animals. Animation helps visualize how the elaborate shapes of the microscopic spicules could help give the sponge’s body structure.
What do Archaeocytes do in sponges?
Archaeocytes. Archaeocytes are very important to the functioning of a sponge. These cells are totipotent, which means that they can change into all of the other types of sponge cells. Archaeocytes ingest and digest food caught by the choanocyte collars and transport nutrients to the other cells of the sponge.
Where does the water move in sponge body?
Water is pumped directly through pores, called ostia, into the spongocoel and then out of the sponge through an opening called the osculum (plural oscula). The spongocoel is lined with specialized digestive cells called choanocytes that filter and take in food. Synconoid is a more complex body plan.
Why is movement of water through a sponge important for feeding How are choanocytes involved in this process?
Whereas pinacocytes line the outside of the sponge, choanocytes tend to line certain inner portions of the sponge body that surround the mesohyl. The structure of a choanocyte is critical to its function, which is to generate a water current through the sponge and to trap and ingest food particles by phagocytosis.
How does sponge architecture contribute to increased flow of water through a sponge and to increased feeding efficiency?
Cells in the sponge walls filter food from the water as the water is pumped through the body and the osculum (“little mouth”). The flow of water through the sponge is in one direction only, driven by the beating of flagella which line the surface of chambers connected by a series of canals.
What happens to the food and water as they enter the inside of the sponge?
Sponges feed by straining food particles from water. As water enters a sponge, Page 2 it carries tiny organisms such as bacteria and protists. Collar cells on the inside of the central cavity trap these food particles and digest them. Sponges are very efficient at removing food particles from water.
