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Sponges of California

The Thacker Lab has restarted the Marine Sponges of California website, originally developed by Welton Lee and the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Try the multi-character sponge finder for your next sponge identifications!
PORO: Porifera Ontology
The Porifera Ontology is now available from the OBO library and from the project's google code homepage. Thanks to all co-authors and the Phenotype RCN team, including Erik Segerdell, Melissa Haendel, and Chris Mungall!

Updated Version of Porifera OneZoom

A new version of the Porifera OneZoom Tree of Life Explorer is available here, allowing you to visualize the taxonomic classification of Porifera developed by the World Porifera Database. Thanks to Jacinta Cai, James Rosindell, Luke Harmon, and Puri Bangalore!

Spatial Analysis of Aplysina Red Band Syndrome

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Easson CG, Slattery M, Momm HG, Olson JB, Thacker RW, et al. (2013) Exploring Individual- to Population-Level Impacts of Disease on Coral Reef Sponges: Using Spatial Analysis to Assess the Fate, Dynamics, and Transmission of Aplysina Red Band Syndrome (ARBS). 
PLoS ONE 8(11): e79976. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0079976


Integrative and Comparative Biology Releases PorToL Issue

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The September 2013 issue of Integrative and Comparative Biology contains 12 papers from the Assembling the Poriferan Tree of Life symposium, held in January 2013 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.  

Presentations from the symposium are available here.