| Comments |
P.297 left column top paragraph: "Once filtered in the choanocyte chambers, water is eventually expelled
from the sponge via the exhalant opening, or osculum. It has been estimated that up to 24,000 liters of water can be pumped through a 1-kg sponge in a single day (primary source)." P.317 left column bottom paragraph: "Highly relevant to this discussion is an interesting point made recently by R. Hill (ref 154) regarding the abundance of microorganisms in seawater and the potential consequences for sponge microbiology. Central to this argument is the immense filtering capacity of sponges, i.e., up to 24,000 liters of seawater per day for a 1-kg sponge (primary source). Given that the typical cell density of bacteria in seawater is about 10^6 cells/ml, then such a sponge could take in a staggering 2.4 × 10^13 bacterial cells per day. Thus, even if a specific bacterium is present in seawater at only 1 cell/ml (i.e., one-millionth of all cells present), then during a single day a sponge could still filter some 24 million cells of this organism from the water column
(ref 154)." |