Breadcrumb sponge
size
crusts up to tens of centimeters large en a few centimeters thick
color
usually yellow, but also orange or green from one-celled algae living in the sponge
food
plankton
enemies
thanks to its bad flavor, hardly consumed at all
reproduction
sexual and asexual
- Dut: Broodspons
- Lat: Halichondria panicea
- Eng: breadcrumb sponge
- Ger: Brotschwamm, Meerbrot
print
- Breadcrumb sponge, Sytske Dijiksen, www.fotofitis.nl
Breadcrumb sponge
During low tide, you can find this remarkable sponge on jetties and under stones. It usually looks like a thick bready crust with 'volcano' chimneys. Those are the excreting pores. The breadcrumb sponge has a strange smell, similar to exploded gunpowder. In reality, it is a material produced by the sponge itself to keep others from munching on it. Breadcrumb sponge reproduces both sexually and asexually. It releases eggs and sperm into the water, which fuse into larvae and eventually establish themselves as new sponges. Asexually, the sponge pinches off a piece of itself which attaches elsewhere and continues growing as a new sponge. A natural way of cloning.
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