[NEWS]
For reef-building corals, sponges do not make good neighbors. Aggressive competitors for space, sponges use toxins, mucus, shading, and smothering to kill adjacent coral colonies and then grow on their skeletons. A recent survey of coral reefs across the Caribbean shows that overfishing removes the predators of sponges, greatly increasing the threat of fast-growing sponges to an already diminished population of corals. A research team headed by Dr. Joseph Pawlik at U…