In 1980 while on sabbatical leave, I attended a conference on sponges at the T. Wayland Vaughan Laboratory for Comparative Sedimentology, then located on Fisher Island in Miami. * Going into the conference, I was a virtual blank slate concerning sponges. As a kid, I had used a natural sponge to wash the family car, but I preferred the artificial sponges. During the conference, which included going to sea to collect sponges for examination and listening to the experts gathered from around the world, I acquired a rudimentary understanding of sponge evolution, anatomy, physiology, and ecology. But it wasn’t until by chance I broached the subject of the conference with a neighbor of mine that I began to see the significance of sponges in understanding, not just sponge evolution, but rather human evolution.
The neighbor, a visiting Israeli medical researcher, was working at that time on cell communication with respect to cancer. When I told him I had just learned that sponges appear to be able to shut down, to “sleep” as I understood the process, and that they did so without a brain, he said, “That’s one of the reasons we study sponges in cancer research. We want to know how a mass of cells not seemingly tied by any neuronal network can communicate. When we understand cellular communication in a primitive organism like a sponge, we will better understand how cancer cells fool healthy cells in a complex organism like a human.”
Now, some 41 years after we had that talk, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory has released a study by Jacob M. Musser and others that profiles cellular diversity in sponges and casts some new light on those primitive organisms’ cellular communication process. ** Apparently, sponges, which as I noted above have no neurons connected to a central brain, do have genes coded for synaptic communication. In short, these ancient animals, though lacking brains and neuronal networks, seem to have set the stage for you and me to have a brain with synapses across which neurotransmitters carry messages. Musser’s group has discovered a mechanism by which cells in digestive chambers of Spongilla lacustris seem to communicate. But there are still mysteries, evidently. Why did genes necessary for synaptic communication, yet unassociated with any actual synapses in a very primitive animal enter into the sponge makeup? How did those genes become part of the more complex multicellular animal kingdom? Are we and all brainy organisms at least partly the descendants of sponges? As a kid, did I unknowingly use a descendant of an ancient ancestor to scrub dirt off the family car? Holy spongin! Did I was the car with a relative?
Sponges don’t seem to do much. They inhabit both fresh and saltwater environments at varying depths. Sessile in lifestyle, some sponges are encrusting, covering whatever object they find in a blanket of color that can look like an abstract painting. Others have varying shapes from narrow and elongate to round and compact, to vase like. And their sizes vary. Some are larger than a human. All are simple animals, if not simplest of the multicellular animal aggregates of organic and inorganic matter. Spongin, the soft stuff we associate with sponges, is supported by needle-like silicate or carbonate spicules that often look like little swords locked in battle. To acquire food, sponges have openings through which water circulates with the help of waving cilia or flagellated cells called choanocytes. From the circulating water, the sponges extract microscopic food. The puzzle lies in how these collections of cells work in unison for the good of all, again, as I wrote above, without a central processor.
I suppose we could argue that “working for the good of all” is an internal function that multicellular life achieved in sponges as a trophic mechanism and as a prerequisite for facing threats from the outside. In their varying environments sponges live either solitary or colonial lives, but the designation “colonial” should be qualified. They don’t gather and interact like meerkats or people in a commune. Sponges are colonial in the sense that some species dominate a locale, but the presence in numbers of these mostly hermaphroditic animals isn’t the product of a cooperative effort. Given the right salinity, temperature, and food supply, sponges multiply in place. They proliferate where environmental conditions are favorable. Thus, “working for the good of all” therefore applies to the composition of individual sponges, to the individual aggregations of cells serving a mutual purpose, and not to some social need. They form no societies with other sponges—as far as we know. And in staking out a territory, they sometime “war” with other simple animals by releasing toxins. Animals like anemones and corals that crowd sponges are often found on the other side of a dead or neutral zone, an unoccupied strip between these neighbors. It’s a toxic no-trespass zone. Sponge cells might have a friendly intra-body communication system, but they inimically communicate with encroaching neighbors by releasing poisons.
I suppose we could agree that the cells that make up the human body also work in unison for the “good of all” and that in that regard, we do not differ from sponges, at least not internally. And, I also suppose we could see parallels between our colonial lives and the in situ aggregations of unconscious sponges located in optimal biomes when we consider life in big-city apartment buildings. We might even agree that like sponges that just happen to live in the same neighborhood as other sponges, we often find ourselves living among strangers and even among enemies. So also, like the sponges we set up territorial boundaries that separate individuals, and, of course, groups of individuals that we delineate by ethnicity, race, financial status, appearance, religion, politics, or social standing. It’s our brains that do the communal gathering and separating, of course. At times the separating even occurs through the release of toxins as poisoners have demonstrated for centuries. And if not by toxins, then by toxic actions like fighting and killing humans. In that we differ from the sponges: Stuck in place without a brain, sponges can’t consciously wreak havoc on their neighbors. Conscious ostracizing is a brain activity.
With more senses than a sponge, animals equipped with seeing and hearing can separate themselves from perceived dangers of both intraspecies and interspecies threats. Bees have brains, and on first look, they seem to act in unison for the good of all members of the hive, even sacrificing themselves individually when a potential predator threatens. Such interspecies warfare is well documented. According to Karen Hopkin, however, even colonial organisms like bees will separate themselves from other members of the hive when disease threatens, doing so by a form of shunning, what we call “giving the cold shoulder.” *** Is this type of separation instinct or decision? Does the queen bee command by proclamation that all infected bees have less physical contact than uninfected bees? What circumstances make separation among colonial animals the best course to self preservation?
And that brings me to the wearing of masks and quarantining during the COVID pandemic. A mask provides a supposed protection against the spread of disease. Now a twofold question arises: Looking back, do you believe you would have instinctively known to wear a mask and to separate as the disease spread in the human hive, or do you think you needed instruction to wear a mask? In a related question, I might ask your purpose in wearing a mask in public. Do you do so to protect yourself or to protect the colony? “Both,” you say. I suppose I should ask the same two questions about being vaccinated.
So, there are several things going on here in this little musing. Like sponges we are a collection of cells, and also like sponges, our cells communicate internally. But unlike sponges, we have cells that communicate across synaptic gaps in brains that confront the exigencies of daily life in a colonial setting. Sponges have pre-synaptic genes, but no synapses, and of course, no brains that decide; yet, their collection of cells seem somehow to act in unison to “sleep” and to act in defense of the individual by releasing toxins.
We know that our internal communication networks are complex and geared toward self preservation, and we know that because we live among other collections of cells, we take certain steps to ensure both our own survival and the survival of the “colony.” But the latter isn’t as important as the former, isn’t as guaranteed as the former. Those who live colonially in an apartment might make little or no effort to ensure the preservation of unknown neighbors who, like sponges in a supportive environment, simply live next door.
But because we have brains, we have established by choice or force sets of social controls by which we operate as a gregarious species. Inside, the aggregation of cells work for the good of the whole. Outside, we become or we enable one individual to be the “queen bee,” the organism that in the “interest of the whole” determines the degree of proximity or separation among members of the hive. In contemporary society, the individual aggregation of cells is pitted against the intraspecies collective. Is the individual hive member or a mandating queen (or her representative) responsible for the neutral zone, the barrier, the forbidden zone?
Brains with synapses do operate instinctively, as animals other than humans demonstrate. Like other animals, we, too, seem to have some instinct, such as raising our shoulders and ducking our heads upon hearing a loud sound as though we were turtles seeking shelter inside the shell. But those synapses that distinguish us from sponges enable the brain’s cells to operate on a conscious level impossible for sponges, a level that disregards the needs of the individual aggregation of cells in some instances. Synaptic communication enables some humans to override the penchant for self preservation for the sake of the colony. The first responders who rushed into the World Trade Center on 9-11 and the many medical personnel who went to the aid of COVID victims at the outset of the pandemic demonstrate how synaptic communication differs from pre-synaptic communication.
My musings bring me to a final set of questions: Do we separate ourselves from the colony by mandate or instinct? By both? And if we don’t separate ourselves when we are under individual and colony threat, do we act as a consequence of instinct, as bees do when an invading hornet threatens the hive, often sacrificing themselves for the good of all, or as a consequence of acquiescing to a social mandate imposed by one or several aggregations of cells to which we have forfeited power?
Notes:
*The lab has since (1990) been moved to the main campus of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science on Virginia Key, just off the causeway.
**Musser, Jacob M. Et al. 5 Nov 2021. Profiling cellular diversity in sponges informs animal cell type and nervous system evolution. Science, Vol 374, Issue 6568. pp. 717-723. DOI: 10.1126/science.abj2949. Online at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj2949 Accessed November 5, 2021. See summary and video at https://phys.org/news/2021-11-sponges-evolution-brain.html under EMBL. What sponges can tell us about the evolution of the brain. Phys.org. November 4, 2021. Accessed November 5, 2021.
***Hopkin, Karen. 30 Apr 2020. Virus-Infected Bees Practice Social Distancing. Scientific American. Online at https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/virus-infected-bees-practice-social-distancing/ . Accessed November 5, 2021.
The neighbor, a visiting Israeli medical researcher, was working at that time on cell communication with respect to cancer. When I told him I had just learned that sponges appear to be able to shut down, to “sleep” as I understood the process, and that they did so without a brain, he said, “That’s one of the reasons we study sponges in cancer research. We want to know how a mass of cells not seemingly tied by any neuronal network can communicate. When we understand cellular communication in a primitive organism like a sponge, we will better understand how cancer cells fool healthy cells in a complex organism like a human.”
Now, some 41 years after we had that talk, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory has released a study by Jacob M. Musser and others that profiles cellular diversity in sponges and casts some new light on those primitive organisms’ cellular communication process. ** Apparently, sponges, which as I noted above have no neurons connected to a central brain, do have genes coded for synaptic communication. In short, these ancient animals, though lacking brains and neuronal networks, seem to have set the stage for you and me to have a brain with synapses across which neurotransmitters carry messages. Musser’s group has discovered a mechanism by which cells in digestive chambers of Spongilla lacustris seem to communicate. But there are still mysteries, evidently. Why did genes necessary for synaptic communication, yet unassociated with any actual synapses in a very primitive animal enter into the sponge makeup? How did those genes become part of the more complex multicellular animal kingdom? Are we and all brainy organisms at least partly the descendants of sponges? As a kid, did I unknowingly use a descendant of an ancient ancestor to scrub dirt off the family car? Holy spongin! Did I was the car with a relative?
Sponges don’t seem to do much. They inhabit both fresh and saltwater environments at varying depths. Sessile in lifestyle, some sponges are encrusting, covering whatever object they find in a blanket of color that can look like an abstract painting. Others have varying shapes from narrow and elongate to round and compact, to vase like. And their sizes vary. Some are larger than a human. All are simple animals, if not simplest of the multicellular animal aggregates of organic and inorganic matter. Spongin, the soft stuff we associate with sponges, is supported by needle-like silicate or carbonate spicules that often look like little swords locked in battle. To acquire food, sponges have openings through which water circulates with the help of waving cilia or flagellated cells called choanocytes. From the circulating water, the sponges extract microscopic food. The puzzle lies in how these collections of cells work in unison for the good of all, again, as I wrote above, without a central processor.
I suppose we could argue that “working for the good of all” is an internal function that multicellular life achieved in sponges as a trophic mechanism and as a prerequisite for facing threats from the outside. In their varying environments sponges live either solitary or colonial lives, but the designation “colonial” should be qualified. They don’t gather and interact like meerkats or people in a commune. Sponges are colonial in the sense that some species dominate a locale, but the presence in numbers of these mostly hermaphroditic animals isn’t the product of a cooperative effort. Given the right salinity, temperature, and food supply, sponges multiply in place. They proliferate where environmental conditions are favorable. Thus, “working for the good of all” therefore applies to the composition of individual sponges, to the individual aggregations of cells serving a mutual purpose, and not to some social need. They form no societies with other sponges—as far as we know. And in staking out a territory, they sometime “war” with other simple animals by releasing toxins. Animals like anemones and corals that crowd sponges are often found on the other side of a dead or neutral zone, an unoccupied strip between these neighbors. It’s a toxic no-trespass zone. Sponge cells might have a friendly intra-body communication system, but they inimically communicate with encroaching neighbors by releasing poisons.
I suppose we could agree that the cells that make up the human body also work in unison for the “good of all” and that in that regard, we do not differ from sponges, at least not internally. And, I also suppose we could see parallels between our colonial lives and the in situ aggregations of unconscious sponges located in optimal biomes when we consider life in big-city apartment buildings. We might even agree that like sponges that just happen to live in the same neighborhood as other sponges, we often find ourselves living among strangers and even among enemies. So also, like the sponges we set up territorial boundaries that separate individuals, and, of course, groups of individuals that we delineate by ethnicity, race, financial status, appearance, religion, politics, or social standing. It’s our brains that do the communal gathering and separating, of course. At times the separating even occurs through the release of toxins as poisoners have demonstrated for centuries. And if not by toxins, then by toxic actions like fighting and killing humans. In that we differ from the sponges: Stuck in place without a brain, sponges can’t consciously wreak havoc on their neighbors. Conscious ostracizing is a brain activity.
With more senses than a sponge, animals equipped with seeing and hearing can separate themselves from perceived dangers of both intraspecies and interspecies threats. Bees have brains, and on first look, they seem to act in unison for the good of all members of the hive, even sacrificing themselves individually when a potential predator threatens. Such interspecies warfare is well documented. According to Karen Hopkin, however, even colonial organisms like bees will separate themselves from other members of the hive when disease threatens, doing so by a form of shunning, what we call “giving the cold shoulder.” *** Is this type of separation instinct or decision? Does the queen bee command by proclamation that all infected bees have less physical contact than uninfected bees? What circumstances make separation among colonial animals the best course to self preservation?
And that brings me to the wearing of masks and quarantining during the COVID pandemic. A mask provides a supposed protection against the spread of disease. Now a twofold question arises: Looking back, do you believe you would have instinctively known to wear a mask and to separate as the disease spread in the human hive, or do you think you needed instruction to wear a mask? In a related question, I might ask your purpose in wearing a mask in public. Do you do so to protect yourself or to protect the colony? “Both,” you say. I suppose I should ask the same two questions about being vaccinated.
So, there are several things going on here in this little musing. Like sponges we are a collection of cells, and also like sponges, our cells communicate internally. But unlike sponges, we have cells that communicate across synaptic gaps in brains that confront the exigencies of daily life in a colonial setting. Sponges have pre-synaptic genes, but no synapses, and of course, no brains that decide; yet, their collection of cells seem somehow to act in unison to “sleep” and to act in defense of the individual by releasing toxins.
We know that our internal communication networks are complex and geared toward self preservation, and we know that because we live among other collections of cells, we take certain steps to ensure both our own survival and the survival of the “colony.” But the latter isn’t as important as the former, isn’t as guaranteed as the former. Those who live colonially in an apartment might make little or no effort to ensure the preservation of unknown neighbors who, like sponges in a supportive environment, simply live next door.
But because we have brains, we have established by choice or force sets of social controls by which we operate as a gregarious species. Inside, the aggregation of cells work for the good of the whole. Outside, we become or we enable one individual to be the “queen bee,” the organism that in the “interest of the whole” determines the degree of proximity or separation among members of the hive. In contemporary society, the individual aggregation of cells is pitted against the intraspecies collective. Is the individual hive member or a mandating queen (or her representative) responsible for the neutral zone, the barrier, the forbidden zone?
Brains with synapses do operate instinctively, as animals other than humans demonstrate. Like other animals, we, too, seem to have some instinct, such as raising our shoulders and ducking our heads upon hearing a loud sound as though we were turtles seeking shelter inside the shell. But those synapses that distinguish us from sponges enable the brain’s cells to operate on a conscious level impossible for sponges, a level that disregards the needs of the individual aggregation of cells in some instances. Synaptic communication enables some humans to override the penchant for self preservation for the sake of the colony. The first responders who rushed into the World Trade Center on 9-11 and the many medical personnel who went to the aid of COVID victims at the outset of the pandemic demonstrate how synaptic communication differs from pre-synaptic communication.
My musings bring me to a final set of questions: Do we separate ourselves from the colony by mandate or instinct? By both? And if we don’t separate ourselves when we are under individual and colony threat, do we act as a consequence of instinct, as bees do when an invading hornet threatens the hive, often sacrificing themselves for the good of all, or as a consequence of acquiescing to a social mandate imposed by one or several aggregations of cells to which we have forfeited power?
Notes:
*The lab has since (1990) been moved to the main campus of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science on Virginia Key, just off the causeway.
**Musser, Jacob M. Et al. 5 Nov 2021. Profiling cellular diversity in sponges informs animal cell type and nervous system evolution. Science, Vol 374, Issue 6568. pp. 717-723. DOI: 10.1126/science.abj2949. Online at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj2949 Accessed November 5, 2021. See summary and video at https://phys.org/news/2021-11-sponges-evolution-brain.html under EMBL. What sponges can tell us about the evolution of the brain. Phys.org. November 4, 2021. Accessed November 5, 2021.
***Hopkin, Karen. 30 Apr 2020. Virus-Infected Bees Practice Social Distancing. Scientific American. Online at https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/virus-infected-bees-practice-social-distancing/ . Accessed November 5, 2021.
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