ИСТИНА

Sponges (phylum Porifera) traditionally are represented as inactive sessile filter-feeding animals which devoid of any behavior except filtering activity. However, different time-lapse techniques show that sponges are able to wide range of coordinated but slow whole-organism behavior. The present study concerns peculiar type of such behavior in the demosponge Amphilectus lobatus (Montagu, 1814) – stolonial movement. During stolonial movement sponge produces outgrowths (stolons) which crawl along substrate and branch thus forming complex net covering considerable area of substrate. This net is used by sponge for searching new spots with appropriate environmental conditions for individual relocation. Branching stolons allow sponge exploring the wide substrate areas, while the ability to retract some stolons minimizes the cost of such exploring. After such spots are found all cells of maternal sponge migrate through stolons leaving naked maternal skeleton forming one or several daughter sponges in the new location. Thus, stolonial movement combines traits of crawling along substrate and asexual reproduction. This behavior relies on the massive cell dedifferentiation followed by coordinated cell migrations to the spot of new sponge body formation and their subsequent differentiation into the specialized cell types. How to cite: Lavrov A and Kosevich I. Stolonial movement of demosponge Amphilectus lobatus [version 1; not peer reviewed]. F1000Research 2017, 6:1522 (poster) (doi: 10.7490/f1000research.1114759.1)