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Skip to Search Results- 1Adams, Emily
- 1Aragones Suarez, Pablo
- 1Brown, Rachel R
- 1Chu, Jackson Wing Four
- 1Curtis, Dinn
- 1Grant, Nathan
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Fall 2010
The glass sponge reefs of western Canada are modern analogues to ancient reefs and are unique habitats requiring conservation. However, the patterns and processes of the glass sponges have not been empirically studied. Here, I characterized the biology of the glass sponges in their reefs. I...
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Evolution of the sponge body plan: Wnt and the development of polarity in freshwater sponges
DownloadSpring 2014
Body polarity is a fundamental aspect of all multicellular organisms. Metazoans – animals – are monophyletic, but is body polarity homologous among all phyla? Sponges are considered to have branched off first from other animals and therefore studies of polarity formation in the simple sponge body...
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Gene expression and sensory structures in sponges: Explorations of sensory-neural origins in a non-bilaterian context
DownloadFall 2017
The nervous system is present in all but two animal phyla – one of them being Porifera, sponges. Sponges have no neurons and yet have organized behavior and finely tuned sensation. Furthermore, sponges have genes involved in the nervous system of other animals (informally called ‘neural’ genes)....
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Habitat Complexity and Functional Ecology of Shallow Glass Sponge Reefs in Howe Sound, British Columbia
DownloadSpring 2021
The habitat complexity of an aquatic ecosystem plays an important role in niche partitioning and mediating the coexistence of numerous species within a given space. Studying the habitat complexity of glass sponge reefs along the British Columbia (BC) coast provides insight into how and why...
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Interpretation of sponge fossil faunas: A neontological approach to a paleontological problem
DownloadFall 2021
The tempo and mode of early animal evolution remains one of the biggest conundrums in biology. Stratigraphy shows that there is a gap, not attributable to poor preservation, of at least ~100 Myr between the oldest animal fossils and the divergence times implied by molecular phylogenies. Sponges,...
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Fall 2010
Epithelia form protective barriers and regulate molecule transport between the mesenchyme and environment. Amongst all metazoans, only sponges are said to lack 'true' epithelia however the physiology of sponge cell layers are rarely studied empirically. Aggregates and gemmules of a freshwater...
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Fall 2015
Reef-forming glass sponges are ecosystem engineers that provide habitat for a diverse assemblage of benthic marine species. Sixteen glass sponge reefs have recently been discovered at 100-200 m depth off the coast of British Columbia, Canada and are of conservation interest. Nothing is known of...
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Fall 2018
Glass sponge reefs are globally unique ecosystems on Canada’s western continental shelf that are susceptible to harm from fishing (e.g., bottom-contact trawling). In 2017, a marine protected area (MPA) was created to protect four of these reefs in Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound. Three...
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Fall 2018
Benthic marine habitats in Canada have been well-sampled since the annual groundfish survey commenced in 1970. However, trawl surveys cover only non-rocky sediments and many species collected are not identified to lower taxa, leaving large gaps in our understanding of benthic diversity. Sponges...