![]() Joining us today is Dr Merrick Ekins (ME), who works with carnivorous sponges and deep sea creatures. Each week we will reveal something else from the network’s collections. From the mysteries of the deep sea to the world’s rarest tank, Mephisto, there’s wedding dresses, prehistoric reptiles, whales, molluscs and much more. Hi, I’m Dr Rob Bell (RB), and over the coming months, I’m going to be taking you behind the scenes of the Queensland Museum Network and their brand new podcast Museum Revealed. They have a reputation for being among the most toxic animals on the planet and are thus primary targets of the pharmaceutical industry.Ī few decades ago, when carnivorous sponges (now known as Family Cladorhizidae) were discovered in deep-seas, that do not filter feed seawater, nor have the cellular structures to be able to do so, but have instead evolved as predators that catch and digest their prey directly (such as wayward small crustaceans). Marine sponges ( Phylum Porifera) are suspension feeders, filtering seawater for organic particles and metabolising many toxic chemical compounds from the seawater excreted by other animals, plants and microbes. Read Merrick's profile What are marine sponges? His job entails field surveys to Moreton Bay, the Great Barrier Reef and most remote locations including Torres Straits. He is responsible for the curation of over 60,000 specimens including 5,000 species of sponges, 1,000 species of ascidians and 600 morpho-species of octocorals. He is involved in the collection, identification and preservation of sessile marine invertebrates and some that have a non-sessile phase like jellyfish. See: peduncle (anatomy), peduncle (botany) and sessility (botany).Merrick is the collection manager of Sessile Marine Invertebrates which include Porifera (sponges), Cnidaria (hard and soft corals, jellyfish, hydroids, anemones), Ascidians, Zooanthids, Hemichordata, Bryozoans (lace corals) and Brachiopods (lamp shells). In anatomy and botany, sessility refers to an organism or biological structure that has no peduncle or stalk. Carbonate platforms grow due to the buildup of skeletal remains of sessile organisms, usually microorganisms, which induce carbonate precipitation through their metabolism. The circalittoral zone of coastal environments and biomes are dominated by sessile organisms such as oysters. This allows for faster reproduction and better protection from predators. Main article: Clumping (biology) Blue mussels, Mytilus edulis, are sessile and exhibit clumpingĬlumping is a behavior in sessile organisms in which individuals of a particular species group closely to one another for beneficial purposes, as can be seen in coral reefs and cochineal populations. Biologist Wayne Sousa's 1979 study in intertidal disturbance added support for the theory of nonequilibrium community structure, "suggesting that open space is necessary for the maintenance of diversity in most communities of sessile organisms". This is why the most widely accepted theory explaining the evolution of a larval stage is the need for long-distance dispersal ability. Sessile organisms such as barnacles and tunicates need some mechanism to move their young into new territory. Many sessile animals, including sponges, corals and hydra, are capable of asexual reproduction in situ by the process of budding. Later they move to the edge of the cactus pad where the wind catches the wax filaments and carries the tiny larval cochineals to a new host. ![]() The juveniles move to a feeding spot and produce long wax filaments. In the case of the cochineal, it is in the nymph stage (also called the crawler stage) that the cochineal disperses. ![]() Conversely, many jellyfish develop as sessile polyps early in their life cycle. Sponges have a motile larval stage and become sessile at maturity. Sessile animals typically have a motile phase in their development. Other sessile organisms grow from a solid object, such as a rock, a dead tree trunk, or a man-made object such as a buoy or ship's hull. Organisms such as corals lay down their own substrate from which they grow. Sessile organisms can move via external forces (such as water currents), but are usually permanently attached to something. This is distinct from the botanical concept of sessility, which refers to an organism or biological structure attached directly by its base without a stalk. Sessile organisms for which natural motility is absent are normally immobile. Sessility is the biological property of an organism describing its lack of a means of self-locomotion. Generally sessile Hydra attached to a substrate For other uses, see Sessility (disambiguation).
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