Sponges play a key role in the transfer of energy and nutrients into many benthic ecosystems, and the volume of water they process is an important regulator of these fluxes. Theoretical scaling relationships between sponge volume, osculum cross-sectional area, and pumping rates were recently proposed and confirmed for small sponge specimens in the lab. To examine how these relationships apply to field populations we measured,...

Many organisms are expanding their ranges in response to changing environmental conditions. Understanding the patterns of genetic diversity and adaptation along an expansion front is crucial to assessing a species’ long‐term success. While next‐generation sequencing techniques can reveal these changes in fine detail, ascribing them to a particular species can be difficult for organisms that live in close association with symbi...

Microbes are known to form intricate and intimate relationships with most animal and plant taxa. Microbe–host symbiotic associations are poorly explored in comparison with other species interaction networks. The current paradigm on symbiosis research stems from species‐poor systems where pairwise and reciprocally specialized interactions between a single microbe and a single host that coevolve are the norm. These symbioses inv...

Natural respiration rates of suspension feeders in temperate ecosystems are still poorly known. This lack of information constrains our understanding of the functioning and dynamics of benthic marine ecosystems in temperate areas.We examined the in situ seasonal variation in respiration rate of three benthic suspension feeders (a sponge, an ascidian, and a gorgonian) in northwestern Mediterranean sublittoral communities using...

Gorgonians are one of the most characteristic groups in Caribbean coral reef communities. In this study, we measured in situ rates of grazing on pico‐, nano‐, and microplankton, zooxanthellae release, and respiration for the ubiquitous symbiotic gorgonian coral Plexaura flexuosa . Zooplankton capture by P. flexuosa and Pseudoplexaura porosa was quantified by examination of stomach contents. In nature, both species captured zoo...