Just spend 3 weeks in very warm seawater in Indonesia.
Besides many bleached corals, I observed for the very first time many “bleached” individuals of this beautiful sponge Callyspongia aerizusa. Back home now, will the population recover soon? #spongethursday

Exploring the dutch Marine biodiversity with 60+students from Leiden University

Good perspectives for the sponge aquaculture field! Our 1-year monitoring study of Dactylospongia metachromia (known to produce interesting pharmaceuticals) revealed a high stability of its microbiome (overall and core). Check our paper w/ nicole de voogd
link.springer.com/article/10.100…

After some delay at Amsterdam due to storm, detour around a certain country in the middle east, missed connection at Jakarta and newly booked flight heavily delayed, we have finally arrived at Makassar and finally enjoying the sunset and Laelae island.

A nitrogen-fixing organelle, or “nitroplast,” has been identified in a marine alga. This discovery sheds light on the evolutionary transition from endosymbiont to organelle.

Learn more this week in Science: scim.ag/6yX

Being a huge Indiana Jones fan and sponge-nerd, feeling thus very delighted hearing Indy saying the words “too deep for spongedivers” in his latest movie. But fellow spongers know it is never too deep for spongedivers! #sponge

Spongeteam already very busy in the first week of 2024! #sponge @Naturalis_Sci

And finishing some sponge labwork before the Christmas break together with Iris Noordermeer Institute biology Leiden #freshwatersponge #spongethursday Naturalis Biodiversity Center

On #spongethursday we test our brand new sem!!!

Presentating our work on giant barrel sponges and Mike Hynes on the coral reef time machine 4D-REEF at the Acroporanet-symposium hosted by Carmabi & UvA and by Mike Hynes

We had a great week working on glass sponges from Curaçao collected with Substation Curacao together with Celso Domingos & Rob van Soest

Glad to announce our newest paper. We used target capture to enrich hundreds of loci in #sponges and produce robust phylogenies for this difficult group. Made Universität München Gert Wörheide 🇪🇺🤘🏼🎸

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/17…

Hi all, I have a postdoc position (3 years) in my group on a very challenging topic: co-cultivation of sponge cells and bacterial symbionts. Looking for someone with experience with marine invertebrate cells AND bacteria. Thanks for sharing!
wur.nl/en/vacancy/pos…

On #spongethursday we had some great talks on sponge microbiomes by guest visitor Kathrin Busch and @Naturalis_Sci Benoit Paix & @MARBLES_EU phd Niels vander Windt

RECRUITING two PhD candidates: on butterfly colour & behaviour, and on flower colour & scent; Please RT

Hail hail to taxonomy #taxonomy #biodiversity

Kathrin Busch busy making 3D scans of some deep sea sponges #sponge Naturalis Marine Biodiversity

The last 2 presentations of the sponge taxonomy workshop by Guilherme Muricy & Bernard Picton #sponge

We continue in the weekend, but we are sad that it is the last day of this amazing workshop! thank you for the organization B.Calcinai Marco Bertollino Caterina Longo