How Water Flows inside a Sea Sponge

How Water Flows inside a Sea SpongeA deep-sea sponge's intricate skeleton converts the horizontal flow of ocean currents into a vertical flow through the sponge's body-a mechanism that helps with the sponge's filter feeding.By Charles Day G lass sponges make up a class of sea sponges that inhabit many ocean regions at depths of 450 to 900 meters.Anchored to the seafloor, these sponges draw sustenance from plankton and other organic debris.Because the food particles are sparsely distributed, the sponges need a way of filtering them from seawater.And that method should be efficient lest it consume too much precious energy.Now Giacomo Falcucci of the University of Rome and his collaborators have conducted fluid dynamics simulations of one species of glass sponge, the Venus flower basket (Euplectella aspergillum) [1].They found that the sponge's intricately shaped skeleton causes seawater to passively flow upward through the sponge's filtration system, reducing the metabolic cost of extracting food.Glass sponges owe their name to the star-shaped silica A photograph of a cluster of about a dozen Venus flower basket sponges in their natural habitat, the ocean floor.