Sponges are important components of benthic marine communities, particularly coral reefs. Organic extracts of their tissues have yielded a wealth of unusual chemical compounds that are not involved in primary metabolism, and have no known biological functions. The most commonly held theory is that these compounds are distasteful to potential predators, but they may also protect sponges from fouling or overgrowth. This project is a continuation of a research program designed to assess the defenses of Caribbean demosponges, a group whose taxonomy and chemistry is fairly well described, Because reef sponges are abundant and sessile, because they have evolved elaborate putative structural and chemical defenses, and are subject to grazing from generalist and specialist predators, they provide a useful group for testing fundamental hypotheses proposed by ecologists about plant defensive mechanisms.
