New Killer Sponges Found in the Deep Sea - News Watch
Four new species of meat-eating sponges have been discovered deep in the waters off California, a new study says.
There are about 8,500 species of sponges, a type of simple, mostly stationary invertebrate, and the vast majority passively filter their food on the seafloor. But in the past two decades, scientists have found 7 species of carnivorous sponges that attack prey—and the new discoveries bump that number to 11, said Lonny Lundsten, a biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
A. monticola, a new species of carnivorous sponge, uses hooks to trap tiny crustaceans. Photograph by 2006 MBARI
While studying thousands of hours of video filmed by a robot in waters about 1,800 feet (548 meters) deep, Lundsten became an expert at recognizing unusual life-forms. So when he spotted some unusual-looking sponges, the scientist immediately used the robot to collect live samples to take back to the lab. (See pictures of strange-looking sea creatures.)
There, he found the sponges had tiny prey animals trapped on equally tiny hooks on the sponges’ bodies, according to the study, published recently in the journal Zootaxa.
Hooked on Crustaceans
Most deep-sea sponges filter feed by slurping bacteria and other single-celled organisms, creating a small current to force as many of these organisms past their body as possible. The cells, known as choanocytes, have long, tiny, rat-like tails that they whip around to create the current.