New Species of Glass Sponge Discovered off Haida Gwaii
Posted on March 4, 2015
6-27Scientists from the Royal BC Museum have discovered a new species of marine glass sponge. The sponge was discovered off Haida Gwaii, an archipelago on the north coast of British Columbia.The new sac-shaped hexactinellid sponge is only the second known species of the genus Doconesthes. It has been named Doconesthes dustinchiversi after Dustin Chivers, a friend and colleague of Dr. Henry Reiswig, one of the world's top glass sponge experts and a Research Associate at the Royal BC Museum.
The sponge was collected by a fishing vessel, the Pacific Viking, and was immediately deep frozen. The frozen specimen was transferred to the Royal BC Museum. The Georgia Straight reports that the sponge originates from the Bowie Seamount, a flat-topped undersea volcano.
Dr Melissa Frey, Curator of Invertebrates at the Royal BC Museum, says in a statement, "I gave the specimen to Henry, and after closely examining the sponge's spicules he confirmed it new to science. It wasn't anything I'd ever seen before."
Dr. Reiswig says, "They're very strange organisms because they're syncytial, meaning they're one cell. It's all one cytoplasmic animal, like a fungus. It's a different kind of successful form of being an animal."
A research paper on the new sponge can be found here in the journal Zootaxa.
