By Rob Raymond
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Pheronema carpenteri is the scientific name for an underwater animal in the sponge family. Not much is known about these types of sponges except for their size and physical characteristics.Pheronema carpenteri are covered with short thin, hairlike silica spicules and stick out of the upper body. The spicules on the middle of the body are arranged in a pattern that looks like the twigs of a bird's nest. Longer spicules cover the lower body and hold the sponge in soft mud. They use these hairlike structures to initiate themselves into motion.
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These sponges are small, growing up to 7.5 cm and are tube-shaped and often white to cream in colour. Like Pheronema, Sycon are also part of the sponge family . They move slowly by directing their water current in a certain direction with myocytes. A myocyte is the type of muscle tissue found in the cell membrane. They are long, tubular organisms that develop from myoblasts (another organism in this phylum) to form muscles in a process known as myogenesis.
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The Demospongiae are the largest class in the phylum Porifera. Their skeleton are made of spicules consisting of fibers of the protein spongin, the mineral silica, or both. young colonies are able to detach from their sites of settlement and by using filamentous podia, to move to other sites in the vicinity. These podia are 10–16 mm long extensions of the sponge body wall that bear an adhesive knob on their distal ends. After being attached, the contracting ‘podia’ pull the spherical colonies of 2.0–3.0 cm in diameter, transporting them to a new site.