I just received an email through a mailing list about a graduate position in Frankfurt on sponge evolution.
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On the Evolution of Porifera
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- Saturday, 21 Feb ruary 2009 - 10:29 UTC
Naturally this lead me to wonder whether they are actually intelligently designed.
Look at the CSI on that!Last updated: Saturday, 21 Feb 2009 - 10:29 UTC
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Comments
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Bob – when I saw the title of this post, a picture of Spongebob was not what I expected. That’ll teach me.
Spongebob has as much to do with Porifera as fish with bicycles.
Spongebob’s clearly bilaterian so distinct from the Porifera?
He must have evolved. Clearly he’s a hopeful monster.
But don’t use that exact phrase when explaining it to the kids.
Take that Haldane- a hopeful monster with angular underwear. And eyes.
Oh boy.
I went to a seminar on Metazoan genes, genomes and evolution in the Great Barrier Reef. It was a really fascinating talk with beautiful images of the animals off of the Australian north coast. They’ve just sequenced the genomes of species of cnidarians (jelly fish, coral etc.) But when the speaker got to Porifera and mentioned that sponges have 30 000 genes in their genome (v.s. humans with 22 000-35 000 depending on the estimation method) and how gene number doesn’t necessarily reflex organism complexity etc. all I could think of was Sponge Bob, Square Pants.
I’m guessing you weren’t brave enough to bring this up in the questions.