She didn’t dive for her material herself – ‘unfortunately’ – but worked with other PhD students and Naturalis Biodiversity Center. From Curaçao to Tanzaniaīayona Maldonado studied sponges from five areas: Curaçao, Martinique, Tanzania, Taiwan and Indonesia. They are constantly renewing themselves.’ It could be that the speed increases with the years, but is could also be that a sponge grows old precisely because he or she – unlike many other species of sponge, giant barrel sponges have one gender for life – has a rapid cell division rate. And the surprising thing was: the older the sponge, the faster the cell division rate. One turned out to be around two thousand years old. ‘Sponges can live to a ripe old age six hundred is quite normal. Bayona Maldonado investigated how the production of compounds in giant barrel sponges is influenced by such factors as depth, temperature and acidity of the water, and looked at the genetic characteristics and age of the sponges. So sponges are not as simple as they look. To determine the age of a giant barrel sponge, you enter three values into a mathematical model: the diameter of the opening at the top (osculum), the diameter of the base and the height. Each year, researchers isolate no fewer than two hundred new substances, produced by sponges.’ For example, they make sure they’re not so nice to eat and fend off parasites and diseases. They resolve that by collaborating with microorganisms and by producing an enormous variety of chemical compounds. They can’t move around so they have to be able to sustain themselves in one place. Sponges produce a huge number of different substances. ‘I find natural marine products interesting. As a source of food, but also for the carbon, nitrogen and silicon cycles.’ Not so nice to eatĪll very well for a biologist, but Bayona Maldonado is a chemist. When you think of a coral reef, you first think of coral but sponges are vital to that ecosystem.
‘Giant barrel sponges can become huge’, says Lina Bayona Maldonado.
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