Simulating the Geometric Growth of the Marine Sponge Crella Incrustans

Simulating marine sponge growth helps marine biologists analyze, measure, and predict the effects that the marine environment has on marine sponges, and vice versa. This paper describes a way to simulate and grow geometric models of the marine sponge Crella incrustans while considering environmental factors including fluid flow and nutrients. The simulation improves upon prior work by changing the skeletal architecture of the sponge in the growth model to better suit the structure of Crella incrustans. The change in skeletal architecture and other simulation parameters are then evaluated qualitatively against photos of a real-life Crella incrustans sponge. The results support the hypothesis that changing the skeletal architecture from radiate accretive to Halichondrid produces a sponge model which is closer in resemblance to Crella incrustans than the prior work.