Sponge Structures
Filter Feeder Facts
Cnidarian Knowledge
Symbiotic Strategy
Coral Crisis
100
These pores allow water entry into the sponge.
What are ostia?
100
Sponges are categorized in this phylum.
What is Porifera?
100
This is the kind of symmetry that all cnidarians have.
What is radial symmetry?
100
What is the general term for the group of photosynthetic dinoflagellates that reside in coral tissues?
What are zooxanthellae?
100
This abiotic stressor is the cause of coral bleaching.
What is thermal stress / ocean warming?
200
These "feeding cells" are found in a sponge's choanoderm.
What are choanocytes?
200
This is the asexual process in which a sponge piece breaks off and grows into a new sponge.
What is fragmentation?
200
This cnidarian body plan is typically sessile.
What is a polyp?
200
These are two benefits for algae living in coral tissues.
What is a stable intracellular environment, habitat with optimal light exposure, and protection from UV rays and grazers?
200
Ocean acidification severely limits this coral process.
What is coral skeleton formation?
300
This is the outer protective layer of cells on a sponge.
What is the pinacoderm?
300
These food sources are what sponges eat.
What are bacteria, plankton, and small organic particles?
300
These are the stinging cells that are characteristic of all cnidarians.
What are cnidocytes?
300
This is the term for the nutritional strategy that accounts for up to 90% of coral's fixed carbon needs.
Hint: strategy/mode, not the actual process!
What is autotrophy?
300
This human activity, which involves an underwater excavation of the bottom of a waterway, causes major sedimentation that can smother corals.
What is dredging?
400
These provide structure and support for sponges.
What are spicules?
400
This is the simplest body plan of a sponge.
What is an asconoid body form?
400
What cnidarian class includes box jellyfish?
What is Cubozoa?
400
These three materials are transferred from the symbiotic algae to the coral host.
What are fixed carbon (sugars), lipids, amino acids, and oxygen?
400
Current scientific research suggests that this disease is caused by a bacterium called Cysteiniphilum litorale.
What is White Band Disease?
500
This flexible protein forms a matrix of gelatinous fibers in between cell layers of a sponge.
What is spongin?
500
This class of deep-sea sponges have a skeleton of six-rayed spicules made of silica.
What is Hexactinellida?
500
This term refers to an individual organism that makes up a part of a colony.
What is a zooid?
500
This is the method of symbiont acquisition in which algae is taken up by the host from surrounding seawater during the coral's lifetime.
What is horizontal transmission?
500
These byproducts of photosynthesis cause severe oxidative stress in corals, potentially leading them to expel their algal symbionts under certain conditions.
What are reactive oxygen species?