Cover Page
The following handle holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation:
http://hdl.handle.net/1887/81578
Author: Swierts, T.
Stellingen
behorend bij het proefschrift getiteld:
DIVERSITY IN THE GLOBALLY INTERTWINED GIANT BARREL
SPONGE SPECIES COMPLEX
Thomas Swierts
1. Homogeneity is, contrary to popular belief, not a prerequisite for harmonious cohabitation (chapters 2, 3).
2. Individuals are, by nature, quite hospitable towards outsiders (chapters 4, 5). 3. The relationship between giant barrel sponges and microorganisms is often not
exclusive (chapter 6).
4. Giant barrel sponges can be a great support for those who feel lost (chapter 7). 5. Formally naming cryptic species is not only essential to include them in conservation
policies but also for the replicability of experiments (Delić et al. 2017).
6. As cryptic speciation is common in sponges; new species descriptions of sponges are only valuable if they are complemented with the deposition of DNA sequences in a database (Erpenbeck et al. 2016).
7. As sponges are the sister-group to all other metazoans, the evolutionary history of sponge taxa should be considered on a larger time scale than any other multicellular animal phylum (Simion et al. 2017).
8. Besides studying how the ecosystem affects microbial communities of sponges, future studies should also study how microbial communities of sponges affect the ecosystem (Pita et al. 2018).
9. “Panta Rhei” (Heraclitus ±500BC) – ‘everything flows’ – is the motto of Porifera avant la lettre.
10. In the Anthropocene, it is comforting to study organisms that are set to outlive those who study them (Vacelet 1999; Hooper and van Soest 2002).
11. The morphological diversity in sponges shows that there are more solutions than problems.
