1.
Origin of Animals
 Choanoflagellates- are solitary or colonial aquatic
eukaryotes with each cell carrying a flagellum surrounded
by a collar of microvilli. They are noteworthy because
they strongly resemble sponge feeding cells called
choanocytes; collars develop into choanocytes after
larval metamorphosis. Collar cells also occur in certain
corals and some echinoderms so if they were part of the
earliest animal lineage this morphology has been lost or
suppressed in most taxa.
 Adult sponges have deceptively simple bodies; they are
aggregations of several different cell types including
choanocytes held together by an extracellular matrix.
 A sponge body has neither a mouth nor a digestive tract
 The sponge genome that contains many elements that
code for parts of he regulatory pathways of more complex
animals including proteins involved in spatial patterning
like those that specify an anterior and posterior pole in
larva.
 Sponges today a re products of millions of years of
evolution since their ancestors diverged from those of
other animals
2. Phylum Porifera: Sponges
 Sessile sponges draws food and water into its body
instead.
 A sponge uses a flagellated collar cell called choanocytes
to move waters
 The sponge body is designed as an efficient aquatic filter
for removing suspended particles from the surrounding
water
 Sponges are always attached usually to rocks, shells,
corals, or other submerged objects.
 Their growth patterns often depend on shape of the
substratum direction and speed of water currents and
availability of space so that the same species may differ
markedly in appearance under different environmental
conditions.
 Larger sponges particularly tend to harbor a great variety
of invertebrate commensals.
 Skeletal framework of a sponge can be fibrous and or
rigid. The rigid skeleton consists of calcareous or
siliceous support called spicules
 Sponges harbor microalgae and cyanobacteria on the
body surface and deep inside the body.
 Sponges are an ancient group with an abundant fossil
record dating back to the early Cambrian period and even
according to some claims, the Precambrian.
3. Form and Function
 Sponges feed by collecting suspended particles from
water pumped through internal canal systems
 Pinacocytes- incurrent pores in the outer layer of cells
 Dermal ostia- incurrent pores inside the body where
water is directed past the choanocytes where food
particles are collected on the choanocyte collar a process
called suspension feeding.
 Choanocytes take small particles through phagocytosis
 Choanocytes acquire protein molecules through
pinocytosis.
4. Type of Canals Systems
 Asconoids- simplest organization; the sponge draws
water inside through microscopic dermal pores by the
beating of large numbers of flagella on the choanocytes
that lie in the spongocoel. Used water is expelled through
a single large osculum; can only collect water adjacent to
the spongocoel.
 Synconoid- tubular body and single osculum; thicker and
more complex that asconoid; the linings has been folded
outward to make choanocyte-lined canals; the canals are
of small diameter compared with an asconoid spongocoel
so mos of the water in a canal is accessible to
choanocytes. Water enter through the deral ostia to the
incurrent canals then filtered by tiny openings called
prosoplyes into the radial canals. The choanocytes forces
the used water through apopyles into the spongocoel.
 Leuconoids- Most complex the surface area of the
sponge type; the surface area of the food-collecting
region with choanocytes is greatly increased here the
choanocytes line the walls of small chambers where they
can effectively filter all the water present. Chambers are
filled from incurrent canals and discharge water into
excurrent canals that eventually lead to an osculum.
5. Types of Cells in the Sponge Body
 Mesohyl- sponge cells are arranged in a gelatinous
extracellular matrix.
 Choanocytes- lines flagellated canals and chambers are
ovoid cells with one end embedded in mesohyl and the
other exposed. The exposed end bears a flagellum
surrounded by a collar forming a fine filtering device for
straining food particles from the water.
 Digestion is entirely intracellular
 Archaeocytes- ameboid cells that move in the mesohyl.
They phagocytize particles at the pinacoderm and
receive particles for digestion from choanocytes. They
can differentiate into any other types of specialized cells.
 Sclerocytes- secrete spicules
 Spongocytes- secrete sponging fibers
 Collencytes- secrete fibrillary collagen
 Lophocytes- secrete large quantities of collagen
 Pinacocytes- nearest approach to a true tissue in
sponges is arrangement of the pinacocyte cells of the
pinacoderm; are thin flat epithelial like cells that cover the
exterior surface and some interior surface of a sponge.
Can ingest food particles by phagocytosis some
pinacocytes are modified as contractile myoctes.
6. Cell Independence
 Sponge have a tremendous ability to injuries and to
restore lost parts a process called regeneration.
 Somatic embryogenesis- a sponge cuts into small
fragments then entire new sponges can develop from
these fragments or aggregates of cells
 Regeneration following fragmentation is one means of
asexual reproduction. Asexual reproduction can also
occur by budding. External buds may become detached
from the parent and float away to form new sponges.
Internal buds are formed in freshwater sponges and
some marine sponges, here archaeocytes collect in the
mesohyle and become surrounded by a tough a sponging
coat incorporating siliceous spicules.
7. Sexual reproduction
 Sponges are monoecious
 Sponges are viviparous; after fertilization the zygote is
retained in and derives nourishment from its parent and a
ciliated larva is released
 The free swimming larva of most sponges is a solid
bodied parenchymula
 Calcispongiae and a few demospongia have a very
strange developmental patters, a hollow blastula called a
 stomoblastula develops with flagellated cells towards the
interior .
8. Class Calcispongiae
 Calcereous sponges have spicules composed of calcium
carbonate.
 Spicules are straight or have three or four rays.
 Asconoid, syconoid or leuconoid
9. Class Hexactinellida
 Nearly all deep-sea forms
 Are radially symmetrical
 Six rayed siliceous spicules that are commonly bound
together into a network forming a glasslike structure.
 The body of a hexactinellid sponge is composed of a
single continuous syncytial tissue called a trabecular
reticulum
 The synctical nature of these unusual sponges might
suggest a syncytical origin for metazoans but the details
of development refute this idea
10. Class demospongiae
 Spicules are siliceous but are not six rayed
 Spicules bound together by spongin
 Some are encrusting; some are tall and fingerlike; some
are low and spreading; some bore into shells and some
are shaped like fans, vases, cushions or balls.
 They reproduce sexually but existing genotypes may also
reappear annually from gemmules
11. Class Homoscleromorpha
 Marine sponges that occur in a range of colors
 The cells of this later also differ from those in cells of
other sponge classes because they connect not only to
each other sponge classes but also to the ECM with
special adherens cell junctions.
 Cadherins- true tissue the cells connect to each other via
proteins
 Divided into two clades, one whose members lack
spicules and other with spicules that do not form around
a central longitudinal filament.