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Sponge Reef
Sponge reefs are reefs formed by Hexactinellid sponges, which have a skeleton made of silica, and are often referred to as ''glass sponges''. Such reefs are now very rare, and found only in waters off the coast of British Columbia, Washington (state), Washington and southern Alaska. Recently sponge reefs were identified within the strait of Georgia and Howe Sound, Howe sound close to Vancouver. Although common in the late Jurassic period, reef-building sponges were believed to have gone extinct during or shortly after the Cretaceous period, until the existing reefs were discovered Queen Charlotte Sound / Tōtaranui, Queen Charlotte sound in 1987–1988 – hence these sometimes being dubbed living fossils. The reefs serve an important ecological function as habitat, breeding and nursery areas for fish and invertebrates but are currently threatened by the fishery, offshore oil and gas industries. Attempts are being made to protect these unique ecosystems through fishery closures ...
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Haeckel Hexactinellae
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, natural history, naturalist, eugenics, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms and coined many terms in biology, including ''ecology'', ''phylum'', ''phylogeny'', and ''Protista.'' Haeckel promoted and popularised Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the influential but no longer widely held recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarises its species' evolutionary development, or phylogeny. The published artwork of Haeckel includes over 100 detailed, multi-colour Biological illustration, illustrations of animals and sea creatures, collected in his ''Kunstformen der Natur'' ("Art Forms of Nature"), a book which woul ...
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Syncytium
A syncytium (; plural syncytia; from Greek: σύν ''syn'' "together" and κύτος ''kytos'' "box, i.e. cell") or symplasm is a multinucleate cell which can result from multiple cell fusions of uninuclear cells (i.e., cells with a single nucleus), in contrast to a coenocyte, which can result from multiple nuclear divisions without accompanying cytokinesis. The muscle cell that makes up animal skeletal muscle is a classic example of a syncytium cell. The term may also refer to cells interconnected by specialized membranes with gap junctions, as seen in the heart muscle cells and certain smooth muscle cells, which are synchronized electrically in an action potential. The field of embryogenesis uses the word ''syncytium'' to refer to the coenocytic blastoderm embryos of invertebrates, such as ''Drosophila melanogaster''. Physiological examples Protists In protists, syncytia can be found in some rhizarians (e.g., chlorarachniophytes, plasmodiophorids, haplosporidians) and acellula ...
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Generalised Food Web For Sponge Reefs
A generalization is a form of abstraction whereby common properties of specific instances are formulated as general concepts or claims. Generalizations posit the existence of a domain or set of elements, as well as one or more common characteristics shared by those elements (thus creating a conceptual model). As such, they are the essential basis of all valid deductive inferences (particularly in logic, mathematics and science), where the process of verification is necessary to determine whether a generalization holds true for any given situation. Generalization can also be used to refer to the process of identifying the parts of a whole, as belonging to the whole. The parts, which might be unrelated when left on their own, may be brought together as a group, hence belonging to the whole by establishing a common relation between them. However, the parts cannot be generalized into a whole—until a common relation is established among ''all'' parts. This does not mean that the p ...
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Upwelling
Upwelling is an oceanographic phenomenon that involves wind-driven motion of dense, cooler, and usually nutrient-rich water from deep water towards the ocean surface. It replaces the warmer and usually nutrient-depleted surface water. The nutrient-rich upwelled water stimulates the growth and reproduction of primary producers such as phytoplankton. The biomass of phytoplankton and the presence of cool water in those regions allow upwelling zones to be identified by cool sea surface temperatures (SST) and high concentrations of chlorophyll-a. The increased availability of nutrients in upwelling regions results in high levels of primary production and thus fishery production. Approximately 25% of the total global marine fish catches come from five upwellings, which occupy only 5% of the total ocean area.Jennings, S., Kaiser, M.J., Reynolds, J.D. (2001) "Marine Fisheries Ecology." Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd. Upwellings that are driven by coastal currents or diverging open oc ...
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Queen Charlotte Sound (Canada)
, image = , alt = , caption = , image_bathymetry = Locmap-QCS-Hecate-Dixon.png , alt_bathymetry = , caption_bathymetry = Queen Charlotte Sound as delineated by BCGNIS, along with Hecate Strait and Dixon Entrance. Red dots indicate capes and points, grey text indicates island names. , location = British Columbia, Canada , group = , coordinates = , type = , etymology = , part_of = , inflow = , rivers = , outflow = , oceans = Pacific Ocean , catchment = , basin_countries = , agency = , designation = , length = , width = , area = , depth = , max-depth = , volume = , residence_time = , salinity = , shore = , elevation = , temperature_high ...
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Hecate Strait
, image = HecateStrait(PittIsland).JPG , image_size = 260px , alt = , caption = Hecate Strait and Pitt Island , image_bathymetry = Loc-QCS-Hecate-Dixon.png , alt_bathymetry = , caption_bathymetry = Hecate Strait as delineated by BCGNIS, along with Queen Charlotte Sound and Dixon Entrance. Red dots indicate capes and points, gray text indicates island names. , location = British Columbia, Canada , group = , coordinates = , type = , etymology = , part_of = , inflow = , rivers = , outflow = , oceans = Pacific Ocean , catchment = , basin_countries = , agency = , designation = , length = , width = , area = , depth = , max-depth = , volume = , residence_time = , salinit ...
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Continental Shelf
A continental shelf is a portion of a continent that is submerged under an area of relatively shallow water, known as a shelf sea. Much of these shelves were exposed by drops in sea level during glacial periods. The shelf surrounding an island is known as an ''insular shelf''. The continental margin, between the continental shelf and the abyssal plain, comprises a steep continental slope, surrounded by the flatter continental rise, in which sediment from the continent above cascades down the slope and accumulates as a pile of sediment at the base of the slope. Extending as far as 500 km (310 mi) from the slope, it consists of thick sediments deposited by turbidity currents from the shelf and slope. The continental rise's gradient is intermediate between the gradients of the slope and the shelf. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the name continental shelf was given a legal definition as the stretch of the seabed adjacent to the shores of a par ...
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Axel Heiberg Island
Axel Heiberg Island ( iu, ᐅᒥᖕᒪᑦ ᓄᓈᑦ, ) is an uninhabited island in the Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. Located in the Arctic Ocean, it is the 32nd largest island in the world and Canada's seventh largest island. According to Statistics Canada, it has an area of . It is named after Axel Heiberg. One of the larger members of the Arctic Archipelago, it is also a member of the Sverdrup Islands and Queen Elizabeth Islands. It is known for its unusual fossil forests, which date from the Eocene period. Owing to the lack of mineralization in many of the forest specimens, the traditional characterization of "fossilisation" fails for these forests and "mummification" may be a clearer description. The fossil records provide strong evidence that the Axel Heiberg forest was a high-latitude wetland forest. History Axel Heiberg Island has been inhabited in the past by the Inuit, but was uninhabited by the time it was named by Otto Sverdrup, who explored it in 1900–01 ...
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Demospongiae
Demosponges (Demospongiae) are the most diverse class in the phylum Porifera. They include 76.2% of all species of sponges with nearly 8,800 species worldwide (World Porifera Database). They are sponges with a soft body that covers a hard, often massive skeleton made of calcium carbonate, either aragonite or calcite. They are predominantly leuconoid in structure. Their "skeletons" are made of spicules consisting of fibers of the protein spongin, the mineral silica, or both. Where spicules of silica are present, they have a different shape from those in the otherwise similar glass sponges. Some species, in particular from the Antarctic, obtain the silica for spicule building from the ingestion of siliceous diatoms. The many diverse orders in this class include all of the large sponges. Most are marine dwellers, but one order (Spongillida) live in freshwater environments. Some species are brightly colored, with great variety in body shape; the largest species are over ac ...
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Grays Harbor
Grays Harbor is an estuary, estuarine bay located north of the mouth of the Columbia River, on the southwest Pacific coast of Washington (U.S. state), Washington state, in the United States of America. It is a ria, which formed at the end of the last ice age, when sea levels flooded the Chehalis River (Washington), Chehalis River. The bay is long and wide. The Chehalis River (Washington), Chehalis River flows into its eastern end, where the city of Aberdeen, Washington, Aberdeen stands at that river's mouth, on its north bank, with the somewhat smaller city of Hoquiam, Washington, Hoquiam immediately to its northwest, along the bayshore. Besides the Chehalis, many lesser rivers and streams flow into Grays Harbor, such as Hoquiam River and Humptulips River. A pair of low peninsulas separate it from the Pacific Ocean, except for an opening about two miles (3 km) in width. The northern peninsula, which is largely covered by the community of Ocean Shores, Washington, Ocean Sh ...
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Staurocalyptus Dowlingi
''Staurocalyptus'' is a genus of sponge. It was circumscribed in 1897 by Isao Ijima. Taxonomy Ijima circumscribed ''Staurocalyptus'' as a genus in the family Rossellidae. His initial taxonomy included three newly described species and two transferred from ''Rhabdocalyptus''. Ijimi did not designate a type species; in 1967 V. M. Koltun designated ''Rhabdocalyptus dowlingi'' as the type species. A 2002 revision of Rossellidae by K. R. Tabachnick demoted ''Staurocalyptus'' to be a subgenus of '' Acanthascus'' and designated a new type species: ''Staurocalyptus glaber'' . However, , WoRMS Worms may refer to: *Worm, an invertebrate animal with a tube-like body and no limbs Places *Worms, Germany, a city **Worms (electoral district) *Worms, Nebraska, U.S. *Worms im Veltlintal, the German name for Bormio, Italy Arts and entertainme ... still classifies ''Staurocalyptus'' as a genus and follows Koltun's type species designation, not that of Tabachnick. Distribution Its species ar ...
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