[Coral-List] new sponge climate record

[Douglas Fenner]

Anyone who might like to learn more about stromatoporids could take a look
at the Wikipedia page on them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatoporoidea
  Lots of details.  Some built reefs that are now fossil reefs.  Often the
reefs were on soft bottoms.

Also, another popular piece on this study:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00281-8?WT.ec_id=NATURE-202402&sap-outbound-id=AE9C41C284F3EE7B2AE85448185B5476F75EC39C

Cheers, Doug

On Tue, Feb 6, 2024 at 11:58 AM Risk, Michael <riskmj at mcmaster.ca> wrote:

> Yes, an excellent (although ultimately depressing) paper by some very
> competent people.
>
> Some additional context here: for many years (centuries, even) geologists
> have been studying a mysterious group of critters called stromatoporoids.
> They are worldwide in their distribution, and confined (we thought!) to the
> Paleozoic. In some areas, especially in the Devonian of Western Canada,
> they host significant reserves of petroleum.
>
> We were never sure what they were. Early workers thought they were corals,
> or algae, or sponges-or, in one burst of brilliance, forams. After a while
> we more or less settled on them being sponges, although of a group unlike
> any we had seen. Until Judy Lang found and described the ones living at
> some depths in caves off the north coast of Jamaica.
>
> The paleontologists fell on this discovery with cries of delight-finally,
> stromatoporoids had a home! Sponges after all.
>
> They are not uncommon, in the Caribbean. I have collected them at
> relatively shallow depths (10m) in caves on Grand Cayman. For a while, I
> had a ginormous one in my collection-ginormous being a relative term. It
> was about 15x10cm. At the time, neither the techniques nor the money were
> available to work on it. Then the university decided to emphasize other
> aspects, and took over my lab-that specimen now is somewhere in a landfill.
>
> Kudos to the authors. This is great work.
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Coral-List <coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> on behalf of
> Douglas Fenner via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 6, 2024 3:29 AM
> *To:* coral list <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
> *Subject:* Re: [Coral-List] new sponge climate record
>
> Caution: External email.
>
>
> The sclerosponge quote comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosponge
>
> Cheers, Doug
>
> On Mon, Feb 5, 2024 at 9:27 PM Douglas Fenner <
> douglasfennertassi at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Sea sponges keep climate records and the accounting is grim, study shows
> >
> >
> >
> https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/sea-sponges-keep-climate-records-and-the-accounting-is-grim-new-study-shows/ar-BB1hO8nw
> >
> > open-access
> >
> > Ocean warming and warning
> >
> > https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01921-z
> >
> > Not open-access
> >
> > 300 years of sclerosponge thermometry shows global warming has exceeded
> > 1.5 C
> >
> > https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01919-7
> >
> > open-access.  The sponges were collected in Puerto Rico at a depth of
> > 31-91 m, so mesophotic (probably coral reef).  Sclerosponges have a
> massive
> > and hard calcium skeleton with a thin layer of living sponge tissue on
> the
> > surface.  They are mostly at mesophotic depths in the Caribbean, in lower
> > light habitats if shallower.  Not really common I would say.  I'm
> presuming
> > that they add to their external skeleton slowly.  Most are pretty small,
> > one species can be at least 10 cm diameter, others may be smaller.  I
> don't
> > think I've ever seen one in the Indo-Pacific, though they are surely
> here.
> > My impression is not many species.
> >
> > Wikipedia says "
> > Sclerosponges[edit
> > <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Demosponge&action=edit&section=2
> >
> > ]
> >
> > Sclerosponges were first proposed as a class of sponges,
> *Sclerospongiae*,
> > in 1970 by Hartman and Goreau.[16]
> > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosponge#cite_note-16> However, it was
> > later found by Vacelet that sclerosponges occur in different classes of
> > Porifera <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porifera>.[17]
> > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosponge#cite_note-17> That means that
> > sclerosponges are not a closely related (taxonomic
> > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy_(biology)>) group of sponges and
> > are considered to be a polyphyletic grouping and contained within the
> > Demospongiae. Like bats <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat> and birds
> > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird> that independently developed the
> > ability to fly, different sponges developed the ability to build a
> > calcareous skeleton independently and at different times in Earth's
> > history <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_Earth>.
> > Fossil sclerosponges are already known from the Cambrian
> > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian> period.[18]
> > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosponge#cite_note-18>"
> > For more articles on related subjects, see:
> https://www.nature.com/search
> >
> > Such as:
> >
> > Resistance to ocean acidification in coral reef taxa is not gained by
> > acclimatization
> >
> > Coral resilience to ocean acidification and global warming through pH
> > up-regulation
> >
> > A coralline alga gains tolerance to ocean acidification over multiple
> > generations of exposure
> >
> > Cheers, Doug
> >
> > --
> >
>