How sponges ‘spike’ themselves with glass

By Andrew WagnerOct. 18, 2017 , 2:00 PM

Sponges are, for lack of a better term, weird. Aside from being some of the most ancient animals on Earth, these marine invertebrates maintain their shape and stiffness with a matrix of glass. Their spiny silica-based spicules grow and branch to form wicked shapes, from thin needles to spiked spheres. But no one knew precisely how sponges could make such a wide variety of symmetrical shapes. So scientists investigated their 3D structure using x-ray nanotomography, a way of peering within tiny structures without destroying them.

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Chimps pass on sponge drinking trick like a family tradition

26 April 2017

By Sam Wong

Six years ago, a chimpanzee had the bright idea to use moss to soak up water, then drink from it, and seven others soon learned the trick. Three years later, researchers returned to the site to see if the practice had persisted to become part of the local chimp culture.

They now report that the technique has continued to spread, and it’s mostly been learned by relatives of the original moss-spongers. This adds to earlier evidence that family ties are the most important routes for culture to spread in animals.

After the first report of chimps using moss as a sponge in Budongo Forest, Uganda, researchers rarely saw the behaviour again, and wondered whether chimps still knew how to do it. So they set up an experiment, providing moss and leaves at the clay pit where the chimps had demonstrated the technique before.

Then they watched to see whether chimpanzees would use leaves – a more common behaviour – or moss to soak up the mineral-rich water from the pit.

Most of the original moss-spongers used moss again during the experiment, and so did another 17 chimps, showing the practice had become more widespread. The researchers wondered what factors influenced which individuals adopted it: were they connected socially, or through families, for instance?
Keeping it in the family

This group of chimps has been observed for a long time, so the researchers were able to look through field data to calculate an index of how much time each chimpanzee spent with other individuals. It turned out that this metric wasn’t a good predictor of which chimps would use the moss sponge. Instead, moss-sponging was strongly correlated with having moss-sponging relatives.

The chimpanzees didn’t only learn from their parents: it was spread between any family members in either direction. “It’s like the family is the [crucible] where the behaviour is transmitted,” says Thibaud Gruber of the University of Geneva, Switzerland, one of the study authors.

But there were also individuals who learned the technique from non-family members. “Once a behaviour has been developed and spread to a few individuals, the majority of transmission will appear in the family, but if you hang out with some tool users, you’re still likely to develop a behaviour by social learning,” says Gruber.



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Sponges Ruled the World After Second-Largest Mass Extinction

By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | February 13, 2017 10:15am ET 

 

Sponges may be simple creatures, but they basically ruled the world some 445 million years ago, after the Ordovician mass extinction, a new study finds.

Roughly 85 percent of all species died in the Ordovician mass extinction, the first of the world's five known mass extinctions. (The other mass extinctions are the Late Devonian, End Permian, End Triassic and End Cretaceous.) However, while the Ordovician mass extinction wiped out many of these ancient creatures, one group actually prospered: sponges.

"We think the sponges thrived because they can tolerate changes in temperature and low oxygen levels, while their food source (organic particles in the water) would have been increased enormously by the death and destruction all around them," lead study author Joe Botting, a paleontologist at Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China, said in a statement.

Chinese and British researchers discovered the fossils of some of these sponges in the newfound Anji Biota, a fossil deposit in the bamboo forests of Zhejiang province, in eastern China. The scientists uncovered nearly 100 species during their first excavation at Anji, and 75 of these species were sponges, many with preserved soft tissues, they said. 

The diversity of sponges is impressive given that the end-Ordovician event is the second-largest mass extinction on record, the researchers said.

The extinction occurred when a sudden, intense ice age was followed by an equally rapid warming period, which changed the ocean's chemistry and circulation, the researchers said. Earlier studies show that plankton quickly recovered after the extinction, but there are few fossils from that time period that show how other organisms fared, they said. In fact, until the discovery of the Anji Biota, the only known, well-preserved fossil deposit from that era was South Africa's Soom Shale.

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Dolphins can use sponges as tools to snag food they could not otherwise grab, researchers say.

By Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor | April 24, 2014 08:20am ET

This is the first direct evidence that dolphins can use tools to carve out unique places in the food chain, scientists added.

Dolphins are often ranked among the smartest members of the animal kingdom. They engage in complex forms of communication, may recognize themselves in mirrors, can understand sign language, and can learn to poke an underwater keyboard to request toys to play with.

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Four new species of 'killer sponges' from the deep sea

Date:

April 14, 2014

Source:

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

Summary:

Killer sponges sound like creatures from a B-grade horror movie. In fact, they thrive in the lightless depths of the deep sea. Scientists first discovered that some sponges are carnivorous about 20 years ago. Since then only seven carnivorous species have been found in all of the northeastern Pacific. A new article describes four new species of carnivorous sponges living on the deep seafloor, from the Pacific Northwest to Baja California.

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Dolphin 'sponging' spans centuries

Bottlenose dolphins using sponges to protect their noses while foraging is a technique that the animals discovered in the 19th century, a study has found.

Scientists analysed data on the dolphins of Shark Bay, Australia, to model the appearance and transmission of the skill over generations.

The study found that "sponging" could have begun with a single "innovation event" between 120 and 180 years ago.

It suggested that mothers passed on the skill by teaching their offspring.

The analysis is published in the journal Animal Behaviour, and used previous field studies to investigate how sponging was established and maintained.

"It has been thought that behaviours which are exclusively learnt from one parent are not very stable. With our model we could now show that sponging can be a stable behaviour," said Dr Anna Kopps, a biologist at the University of New South Wales.

Continued:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/19909635