Nature Photo Blog      

Alex Mustard - Sponge Bob

All the world's animals are classified into one of 34 phyla. Each phylum represents a fundamentally different type of multi-cellular life. Tropical rainforests represent arguably the most biodiverse ecosystem on land and search their trees and soils and you will find representatives of 9 of these animal phyla. Visit a coral reef and you can find animals from 32 different phyla, providing a huge diversity of nature stories to tell. This is a sponge, one of the simplest types of multi-cellular life, but it is highly adapted to its filtering way of life. These are details of its excurrent opening, that allows it to efficiently filter food from a volume of seawater equivalent to its own body every 5-20 seconds.

Location: Cayman Islands, Caribbean Sea.