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Reply to: Models of flow through sponges must consider the sponge tissue

Nature volume 603, pages E26–E28 (2022)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 23 March 2022

replying to S. P. Leys Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04380-8 (2022).

In their Comment1, Leys et al. question the modelling choice of our original study2 to focus on the skeletal motifs of Euplectella aspergillum may not be suited to gain insight into the hydrodynamics within the body cavity of the sponge and its surroundings, based on two main arguments: in living sponges, (1) the skeleton is embedded within soft tissues, which rely on canals and chambers of millimetre-to-submicrometre sizes, and (2) active pumping governs the water flows through the canals. Here we provide evidence that the above comments, although stimulating an interesting perspective for future studies, have marginal bearing on the conclusions drawn in our original paper—the level of detail of which is defined by the present state-of-the-art of modelling technology.

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Fig. 1: A porous wall with a fine mesh is virtually transparent to an incoming vortex.
Fig. 2: Detail of the flow streamlines exiting from the osculum of E. aspergillum complete model at a Reynolds number of 2,000.

Data availability

STL files for all of the models, raw data for the plots and scripts to reproduce the figures are available on GitHub at https://github.com/giacomofalcucci/Euplectella_HPC. Additional data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on request.

Code availability

All codes necessary to reproduce results in main paper are available on GitHub at https://github.com/giacomofalcucci/Euplectella_HPC.

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Acknowledgements

G.F. acknowledges CINECA computational grant ISCRA-B IsB17– SPONGES, number HP10B9ZOKQ and, partially, the support of PRIN projects CUP E82F16003010006 (principal investigator, G.F. for the Tor Vergata Research Unit) and CUP E84I19001020006 (principal investigator, G. Bella). G.P. acknowledges the support of the Forrest Research Foundation, under a postdoctoral research fellowship. M.P. acknowledges the support of the National Science Foundation under grant number CMMI 1901697. S.S. acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Programme Advanced Grant agreement number 739964 (‘COPMAT’).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Giacomo Falcucci, Giovanni Polverino, Maurizio Porfiri

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Enterprise Engineering “Mario Lucertini”, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy

    Giacomo Falcucci & Vesselin K. Krastev

  2. Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Giacomo Falcucci & Sauro Succi

  3. Centre for Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia

    Giovanni Polverino

  4. Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences, University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy

    Giovanni Polverino

  5. School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Giovanni Polverino

  6. Department of Biomedical Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Maurizio Porfiri

  7. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Maurizio Porfiri

  8. Center for Urban Science and Progress, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Maurizio Porfiri

  9. High Performance Computing Department, CINECA Rome Section, Rome, Italy

    Giorgio Amati

  10. Department of Economy, Engineering, Society and Business Organization, University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy

    Pierluigi Fanelli

  11. Center for Life Nano-Neuro Science at La Sapienza, Italian Institute of Technology, Rome, Italy

    Sauro Succi

  12. Italian Research Council, Institute for Applied Computing, Rome, Italy

    Sauro Succi

Authors
  1. Giacomo Falcucci
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  2. Giovanni Polverino
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  3. Maurizio Porfiri
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  4. Giorgio Amati
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  5. Pierluigi Fanelli
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  6. Vesselin K. Krastev
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  7. Sauro Succi
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Contributions

G.F., M.P. and G.P. designed the research and performed the investigation. G.F. and M.P. supervised the research. G.F., M.P., G.P. and S.S. wrote the manuscript. All the authors participated in initial discussions and approved the final manuscript submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Giacomo Falcucci.

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Falcucci, G., Polverino, G., Porfiri, M. et al. Reply to: Models of flow through sponges must consider the sponge tissue. Nature 603, E26–E28 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04381-7

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