Some sea sponges sneeze to unclog their pores, a new discovery made thanks to time-lapse videos.
It’s “like someone with a runny nose,” says team member Sally Leys, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. “It’s constantly streaming, but it’s going counterflow to the in-current.”
Researchers knew that sponges used contractions dubbed “sneezing” to move water through their bodies in a one-way flow. Typically, water comes in through numerous ostia and leaves through the osculum, a hole near the sponges’ top., it saw tiny specks of mucus exiting from the ostia, moving against the flow of incoming water.
The Caribbean tube sponge uses contractions — called “sneezes” — to help eject mucus from its pores, or ostia. As the time-lapse video zooms in closer, it’s possible to see tiny specks of debris floating out of these pores and traveling along a “mucus highway” where they collect into stringy clumps of goo floating above the surface of the sponge. In real time, this sponge takes between 20 and 50 minutes to complete a sneeze.
Other sea critters feast on these ocean boogers, like brittle stars and small crustaceans. Scientists view sponges primarily as habitat builders, but the mucus buffet shows they also perform an important function as food providers, says Amanda Kahn, a marine biologist at Moss Landing Marine Labs in California who was not involved with this work.
“There’s so much to be said for a study that really spends time and watches,” Kahn says. “They let the animals show for themselves what was happening.”that uses the counterflow technique, Leys says. The team also noted a similar behavior in an Indo-Pacific sponge . But biologists need to dig deeper to figure out how widespread the mechanism is. It’s also unclear exactly what the mucus is or how it’s moving backward through pores.
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