Marine Invertebrates Flashcards
(123 cards)
What are the four classes of Porifera?
Demospongiae, Calcarea, Hexactinellida, and Homoscleromorpha.
What kind of marine invertebrates do the phylum Porifera refer to?
Sponges.
Phylum Porifera is also known as what? Why?
Pore-bearer. This is due to the significance of pores for sponges as pores are the major characteristic of sponges and help them function entirely.
What are the key characteristics of Porifera?
No nerves, muscles, or complex organs, though they have specialized cells. All aquatic, some marine. Sessile.
What is the main goal/function of Porifera bodies?
To maximise water flow, allowing oxygen, nutrients, etc.
What are Ostia?
Ostia are narrow pores on Porifera bodies that direct water flow into the body.
What are Oscula?
Oscula are wide pores that expel the water in the body that’s brought in by the Ostia and filtered by choanocytes/choanocyte chambers.
Porifera have specialized, totipotent cells, what does this mean?
Totipotent cells refer to cells that are able to develop into a cell of any function. Porifera contain choanocytes and amoebocytes.
How do Porifera sexually reproduce?
Sexual reproduction for Porifera is typically hermaphoroditic, and involves their totipotent cells becoming sperm (choanocytes) and oocytes (choanocytes and amoebocytes). They’re fertilized either externally or in the mesophyl and result in larvae.
How do Porifera asexually reproduce?
They can asexually reproduce via fragmentation, where pieces of them may break off and form an individual organism, or gemmules. Gemmules are a tough-coated dormant cluster of embryonic cells that can be produced in fresh-water sponges. These can be produced in the event of unfavourable conditions and can result in the generation of a new sponge.
What makes sponges such efficient sessile filter feeders?
Their body plans maximize water flow which provides oxygen and food, different body plans work differently and focus on surface area as well.
What are the different body plans of Porifera?
Asconoid, syconoid, and leuconoid.
What defines an asconoid body plan of Porifera?
The asconoid body plan are the simplest of the Porifera body plans and involve choanocytes lining the spongocoel (large middle cavity). Tend to be very small Due to their surface area/ratio. *Refer to Lecture 2 - slide 11 for images.
What defines a syconoid body plan of Porifera?
Choanocytes line the side chambers (radial chambers) rather than the large middle cavity (spongocoel).
What defines the leuconoid body plan of Porifera?
Choanocytes line small choanocytes chambers across the sponge, though there’s no spongocoel. Most sponges have this body plan. These can grow extremely large Due to their surface area/ratio.
What are spicules?
Spicules are the structural support for sponges. They can either be calcareous (made of calcium, do diseintegrate in hcl) or silliceous (made of silica, do not disintegrate in hcl). They’re also a form of defence for sponges with their fibreglass-like feeling.
Do bath sponges have spicules?
Bath sponges do not have spicules, which is what gives them their soft and squishy feeling. They instead have collagen spongin which still provide structural support such as spicules.
Porifera are filter feeders, what does this mean?
Sponges are size selective particle feeders, they obtain food by taking in water that contains the nutrients and filtering them, as well as oygen, out of the water via choanocytes. The water continues to be pushed out of the osculum and the nutrients are passed to the amebocytes which transport them to other cells.
What Porifera are not filter feeders?
Carnivorous sponges. They lack a filtering system entirely and instead entangle their prey with spicule-covered filaments that are then digested via amebocytes.
What defines the Porifera class Hexactinellida?
They’re marine, mostly deep sea species that have strictly silliceous spicules with six rays. They either have a syconoid or leuconoid body plan and contain little mesohyl (collagen/galectin/more that fills space between sponge layers, much like an endoskeleton).
What defines the Porifera class Calcarea?
Marine and shallow water sponges that have calcareous spicules with 3-4 rays. They can be any body plan.
What defines the Porifera class Demospongiae?
The most common class among Porifera, with around 83% of sponge species being Demospongiae. They can be Marine or freshwater, can be carnivorous, and are all leuconoid. They can have siliceous spicules, spongin, or both.
What defines the phylum Porifera?
9,212 species. Multicellular sieves. No organs, lack of true tissues. All aquatic and sessile, most marine, 4 classes.
What defines the phylum Cnidaria?
11,861 species - mostly marine, 23 are freshwater. Two tissue layers, 6 classes. No organs or circulatory system. Radial symmetry, colonial, nematocysts. Body plan of sac and tentacles.