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Skip to Search Results- 1Adams, Emily
- 1Aragones Suarez, Pablo
- 1Chu, Jackson Wing Four
- 1Curtis, Dinn
- 1Farrar, Nathan
- 1Kahn, Amanda S
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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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Fall 2016
Suspension feeders are an important component of carbon exchange between the water column and the seafloor, a process called pelagic-benthic coupling. Sponges (Phylum Porifera) are filter feeders that consume especially small particles. They eat bacteria, which are inaccessible to most other...
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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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Insights from Sponge Transcriptomes & Physiology about the Early Evolution of Nervous Systems
DownloadFall 2014
The origin of neurons and neural systems is a research area that has begun to experience increased progress with the growing availability of genomic data from a range of basal metazoans and closely related outgroups. This has allowed a reevaluation of previous models of neural evolution....
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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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Molecular and functional bases of coordination in early branching metazoans – insights from physiology and investigations of potassium channels in the Porifera
DownloadFall 2010
Tompkins MacDonald, Gabrielle Jean
Sponges are filter feeders that lack nerves and muscle but are nonetheless able to respond to changes in the ambient environment to control their feeding current. Cellular sponges undergo coordinated contractions that effectively expel debris. Syncytial sponges propagate action potentials through...
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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 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...
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Spring 2015
Sponges (Porifera) are abundant in most marine and freshwater ecosystems, and as suspension feeders they play a crucial role in filtering the water column. Their active pumping enables them to filter up to 900 times their body volume of water per hour, recycling nutrients and coupling the benthic...