Talk:Hexactinellid

"earth" on the 1st paragraph
shouldn't it be capitalized? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Villings (talk • contribs) 14:48, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

cultural references
I removed the following passage as it had been marked as unverified:


 * In traditional Japanese cultures, this particular animal is given as a wedding gift due to the fact that certain bioluminescent shrimp (arthropoda) tend to form a symbiosis with them. The sponge houses two small shrimp, a male and a female, who live out their lives inside the sponge( they come inside it through ostia--minute pore, feed inside & due to increase in size they can't go out). They breed, and when their offspring are tiny, the offspring escape to find a Venus Flower Basket of their own. thus the shrimps pair live together till death. inspired by this romantic thought Japanese people give venous flower basket as a gift to marriage couple.

If you have a source to corroborate these claims please add the relevant information back to the article. Thanks! Isopropyl (talk) 20:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Biological "optical fibers"
And ditto for these:

and could even be more handy than the artificial versions. The biological fibres of the sponge conduct light beautifully when they are illuminated, and use the same optical principles that modern engineers use to design industrial fibre optics. Despite not having the ultra-high transparency needed for telecommunication networks, they do have other advantages; unlike commercial fibre, it is possible to tie them in tight knots without them cracking or breaking. Another advantage is the fact that these biological fibres are produced by chemical deposition at the temperature of seawater. For the moment, human fibre optics can only be produced with a high-temperature furnace and expensive equipment. These creatures also have the longest lifespans of all creatures (up to 15.000 years) according to AnAge Database.

Max age of the sponges
I'm pulling the 15k year thing even though it's sourced. If these dudes live 15k years, I want to see more sources. My guess is that that's a ,/. error. Ethan Mitchell (talk) 22:34, 21 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I restored the 15K info because it's clear from the source that it intended to write that. Updated the URL to point to a longer description. (The cited publication is available at ). The removal of the rest I agree with. --Alvestrand (talk) 23:35, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

The use of the age source page seems incredulous, even if the age database does admit the citation is unlikely. The original scientific research referred to by this page used a modeling approach to determine ~1,500 years for longevity of a Rossella species, not 15,000 years. The reference regarding Scolymastra joubini (Dayton 1979) actually cited 22,719 years for that sponge, but no experts in the field even discuss this matter...because it is geologically impossible. The model used in the referenced study was also specialized for sponges living in a completely different habitat; therefore any assumptions about metabolism for the other rossellid sponges in the study should not necessarily apply to Scolymastra. Further, Gatti admits to errors ranging up to 40,000 years in her article. I would remove it; it is very misleading, and there are more interesting things about glass sponges that we *do* know, like their fiber optical capabilities which you removed (Muller et al. Biosens Bioelectron. 2006 Jan 15;21(7):1149-55).


 * We have one cited reference in a reviewed journal giving a very high age, and no references in any journal at all stating that "it's impossible". In that case, saying that it's impossible amounts to WP:OR - original research, and Wikipedia isn't supposed to do that. If there's another source that gives another estimate, and there's reason to believe that estimate is more sound, we can remove the other reference based on WP:UNDUE and quote the other, but I don't believe in just blindly removing the data because *I* think that particular researcher was wrong.


 * re fiber: Is the "Biosens Bioelectron" the same as ? I find the index of issue 21(7) at, and an article named "Novel photoreception system in sponges?: Unique transmission properties of the stalk spicules from the hexactinellid Hyalonema sieboldi, Pages 1149-1155, Werner E.G. Müller, Klaus Wendt, Christopher Geppert, Matthias Wiens, Andreas Reiber, Heinz C. Schröder" - but I can't get at more than the abstract. An addition of material based on this article should certainly be reasonable (the stuff about "fiber optics" isn't cited at all now). --Alvestrand (talk) 22:02, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Right, I understand what you mean about impossibility, but if you read the entire Gatti article, which I can't seem to get to now, there is a brief discussion, even there, about how fluctuations in the sea levels due to glaciation would have prevented these sponges from being over 15,000 years old, yet the model gave estimates much older than that in some cases. Thus enforcing my statement of geological impossibility. I research these sponges, and almost without exclusion, I cannot access specimen without the use of a submersible. With this habitat in mind, it's very reasonable to extrapolate that in times where waters were more shallow, these animals would not have survived. I like the paper overall, but my point was: we have a great deal of hard data on these animals, why not discuss it more? For example, hexactinellids are largely composed of a multinucleate cellular matrix (very strange). And they are able to conduct neural-like electrical impulses despite the fact that they have no nervous system.

Here are some nice references for anyone who is interested:

Leys SP, Mackie GO, Reiswig HM. The biology of glass sponges. Advances in Marine Biology. 2007;52:1-145. (This is in a book, not accessible online.)

Martin Dohrmann, Dorte Janussen, Joachim Reitner, Allen G. Collins and Gert Wörheide. Phylogeny and Evolution of Glass Sponges (Porifera, Hexactinellida). Systematic Biology 2008 57(3):388-405.

And I know you can freely access this one although it's less comprehensive than the other two: (Haen et al. 2007, MBE) http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/24/7/1518

Yes the journal you have is right for the article I was trying to direct to earlier. Yes, you should be able to see the abstract on PubMed (but it's hard for me to know what else is public since I'm on a university server). I actually read about some research Bell Labs was doing regarding the optical properties of hex. spicules, and there's a USA Today article covering it: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2003-08-20-sponge-fibers_x.htm

Sorry, I could probably edit some of this stuff myself sometime, but I really wanted to give an opinion without overruling someone else's work. There's a ton of erroneous information on hexacts on the web, in general. Some of it is accidental, and some of it is because they are innately confusing animals. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.186.161.116 (talk) 19:22, 21 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the additional background material! Most of the time cited material is removed by someone saying "it's impossible", it's removed by someone who knows nothing about the matter and just appeals to that wonderful authority "common sense" - it's nice to meet someone who actually knows what he's talking about! I think that it would be proper, given your info, to say that "the things seem to live for a very long time, with some researchers &lt;ref gatti&gt; claiming results indicating lifetimes as long as 15.000 years, but the margin of error in these estimates seems exceedingly large." (note: the Gatti article is still available at the PDF link I gave earlier in talk - better grab a copy before it disappears again!) --Alvestrand (talk) 13:09, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I tried to make the text better - but given my lack of knowledge on the subject, I may have messed up. Please take a look... --Alvestrand (talk) 11:28, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I think it looks much better. Later we can link it to our Tree of Life page, although we haven't published it yet. I'll keep you posted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.186.161.107 (talk) 21:55, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Hexactinellid. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110724175156/http://epic.awi.de/Publications/BerPolarforsch2002434.pdf to http://epic.awi.de/Publications/BerPolarforsch2002434.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 22:22, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Invertebrate Zoology
— Assignment last updated by Whiteamphipod (talk) 17:40, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Symplasma?
Only the lead mentions the treatment of these sponges as Symplasma, without a source. Anyone knows what that's about? —Snoteleks (Talk) 19:08, 10 January 2024 (UTC)