Abstract
One hundred and twenty five demosponge species are known from the Ross Sea, 49 of which have been recorded in Terra Nova Bay within the framework of the PNRA ecological project. The most common species are Tedania charcoti, Axociella nidificata, Calyx arcuarius, Isodictya erinacea, I. cactoides, I. conulosa, Gellius rudis, Gellius spp., Myxilla elongata and Phorbas glaberrima. Two of the 49 species we found are new for Antarctica: Esperiopsis informis and Isodictya conulosa. Most of the sponges were collected at 70–120m depth, where a great substrate heterogeneity allows the coexistence of different biocoenoses.
The success of sponges in habitats characterized by fluctuating food supply during the year is difficult to understand. In fact, in winter, oligotrophic conditions in the water column could represent a metabolic constraint for a filter feeder. A possible explanation could be the direct uptake of diatoms that manage to live for a long time within the sponge tissues. Sponges, therefore, by transferring energy from the water column to the benthos, play a key role in the Antarctic environment. An unusual physical phenomenon has been detected, by studying the sponge/diatom association, in the spicules of the hexactinellid Rossella racovitzae: spicules conduct light as natural optical fibres.
Sponges, and particularly hexactinellids, greatly affect sediment quality by forming mats, up to 1.5-m thick, because their siliceous spicules take a very long time to dissolve. At Terra Nova Bay the occurrence of spicules in the sediments shows three different arrangements: (1) free spicules in the sediments, (2) sphaeroid balls (aegagropila) of densely packed spicules, (3) spicule mats.
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Cattaneo-Vietti, R. et al. (2000). The Role of Sponges in the Terra Nova Bay Ecosystem. In: Faranda, F.M., Guglielmo, L., Ianora, A. (eds) Ross Sea Ecology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-59607-0_39
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-59607-0_39
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