page_title: Venus' flower basket
section_title: Morphology
hierarchical_section_title: Venus' flower basket / Morphology
caption_attribution_description: Top of a A Venus flower basket sponge - Euplectella aspergillum. Image ID: expn4384, Voyage To Inner Space - Exploring the Seas With NOAA Collect Location: Hawaii, East Necker Seamount Photo Date: 20150802T213817Z Credit: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2015 Hohonu Moana
context_page_description: The Venus' flower basket is a glass sponge in the phylum Porifera. It is a marine sponge found in the deep waters of the Pacific ocean. As other glass sponges, they build their skeletons out of silica, which is of great interest in materials science as they do not require heat to form their glass lattices, which in some ways makes their properties superior to manufactured fiber optics. As other sponges, they feed by filtering sea water to capture plankton.
  The sponges are often found to house glass sponge shrimp, usually a breeding pair, who are typically unable to exit the sponge's lattice due to their size. Consequently, they live in and around these sponges, where the shrimp perform a mutualistic relationship with the sponge until they die. This may have influenced the adoption of the sponge as a symbol of undying love in Japan, where the skeletons of these sponges are presented as nuptial gifts.
context_section_description: The body is tubular, curved and basket-like and made up of triaxon spicules. The body is perforated by numerous apertures, which are not true ostia but simply parietal gaps. Syconoid type of canal system is present, where ostia communicate with incurrent canals, which communicates with radial canals through prosopyles which, in turn, open in to spongocoel and to outside through osculum.
  The body structure of these animals is a thin-walled, cylindrical, vase-shaped tube with a large central atrium. The body is composed entirely of silica in the form of 6-pointed siliceous spicules, which is why they are commonly known as glass sponges. The spicules are composed of 3 perpendicular rays giving them 6 points. Spicules are microscopic, pin-like structures within the sponge's tissues that provide structural support for the sponge. It is the combination of spicule forms within a sponge's tissues that helps identify the species. In the case of glass sponges the spicules "weave" together to form a very fine mesh which gives the sponge's body a rigidity not found in other sponge species and allows glass sponges to survive at great depths in the water column.
  It is speculated that the sponge harnesses bioluminescence to attract plankton.
caption: Closeup of the top of a basket
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