The team generated 3D models to show the way the trails were interconnected.
The trails were several centimeters in height and many meters long, often connecting directly to living sponges. The team was even more surprised to observe trails of spicules that appeared in nearly 70 percent of the seafloor images that contained living sponges. The researchers said it is not clear, given the challenging environment, how the area supports such a large community. The peaks of the ridge were found to be covered by one of the densest communities of sponges that has ever been recorded. The video footage was captured in 2016 by the research icebreaker Polarstern as it surveyed the Langseth Ridge, which is permanently covered in ice. In some cases of sponges raised in the lab, movement involved remodeling their entire bodies. Sponges can only move a little by contracting or expanding their bodies. In fact, sponges have no muscles or specialized organs for locomotion, so the researchers were amazed to find a large number of trails But once these creatures have settled in a spot and matured there, they do not generally move around. “This is the first time abundant sponge trails have been observed in situ and attributed to sponge mobility.”Īccording to the study authors, it looked as though the sponges had “crawled” into their current positions. “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,” explained the researchers. The researchers identified mysterious trails of light brown sponge spicules that were spotted in a video. In a new study from Cell Press, experts have discovered that sea sponges have been moving across the floor of the Arctic Ocean.
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