The ocean floor is a fascinating world inhabited by species that seem like visitors from other planets. One, in particular, just discovered, bears a striking resemblance to the star of Steven Spielberg’s 1982 science fiction film ET the Extra-Terrestrial.
It is a new species of glass sponge, baptized as Advhena magnifica (which means magnificent alien) and lives in the seamounts of the Pacific Ocean.
In the strangest marine forest near the Mariana Trench, the deepest area of the Earth’s oceans, we can find a large number of unusual organisms. The newest member of the family is a glass sponge with an incredible resemblance to cuddly ET.
This invertebrate, whose discovery is reported in the PeerJ magazine, has two holes that resemble the large eyes of ET. Living at depths where light barely reaches, glass sponges have no vision and lack a central nervous system to process the information normally provided by the eyes. Instead, it is the osculum, the openings through which the sponge expels water after it has been drawn through smaller holes with food particles removed in a network of channels and chambers. It also has a long stem that gives A. magnificent access to more food-rich waters (and somewhat reminiscent of ET’s neck).
In addition to A. magnifica, Smithsonian researchers described two other new species of sponges, Euplectella sanctipauli and Bolosoma perezi, discovered in the South Atlantic.
Most sponges live at depths of 450-900 meters, but A. magnifica was collected at 2,028 meters and E. sanctipauli almost twice as far away.
Why are they called glass sponges?
Because their skeletons are made of silica.
Referencia: Cristiana Castello-Branco et al. A collection of hexactinellids (Porifera) from the deep South Atlantic and North Pacific: new genus, new species and new records, PeerJ (2020). DOI: 10.7717/peerj.9431
