New Scientist - Loss Of Antarctic Ice Sparks Boom In Marine Sponges

[hatrack]

Global warming threatens to put many species on thin ice. But changing temperatures seem to have sparked new life in a group of Antarctic sea sponges.

Glass sponges, or hexactinellids, normally grow incredibly slowly, sometimes locked in arrested growth for decades. When the Larsen A ice shelf, which stretches above a colony of glass sponges, collapsed in 1995, no one predicted that they would respond with a massive growth spurt.

It looks like the sponges benefited from a feeding frenzy. The disintegration of the ice shelf over 2000 square kilometres let the sunlight in underwater, prompting a boom of phytoplankton, one of the sponges' favourite foods.

Researchers visiting the area in 2011 were surprised to find the forest of sponges in the photo above. They found that glass sponges had doubled in biomass and tripled in population since the last look four years earlier.

EDIT

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23861-seabed-sponge-forest-basks-in-icefree-antarctic-sun.html#.UeGIR6z2-So

[Bill USA]

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