Sponges, after all, have no muscles or specialized organs for moving around. But most species are thought to become sessile as adults. In fact, sponges do have a motile larval stage. It looked as though the sponges had “crawled” into their current positions. “This is the first time abundant sponge trails have been observed in situ and attributed to sponge mobility.” “We observed trails of densely interwoven spicules connected directly to the underside or lower flanks of sponge individuals, suggesting these trails are traces of motility of the sponges,” the researchers, led by Teresa Morganti of the Max Planck Institute of Marine Microbiology and Autun Purser of the Alfred Wegener Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, write.
But, according to a new study in the journal Current Biology on Apin which researchers describe mysterious trails of light brown sponge spicules (spike-like support elements in sponges) across the Arctic seafloor - that isn’t always so. The aquatic animal known as the sponge is often described as entirely sessile: once they’ve settled in a spot and matured, they aren’t generally thought of as moving around. This image shows trails left by sponges as they crawl across the seafloor.
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