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A new occurrence of the genus Corvospongilla (Porifera: Demospongiae) is recorded from the Southeast Asia freshwater of Khorat Plateau, northeast Thailand. This is the second record of the genus from the Lower Mekong Basin with the discovery the new species Corvospongilla lampaoensis sp. nov. inhabiting a eutrophic lentic habitat (in Lam Pao Reservoir) on manmade structures of fish farming and fishery. Skeleton and gemmules morphotraits, diagnostic for Genus Corvospongilla of the family Spongillidae (Order Spongillida), were examined by Light and Scanning Electron Microscopy differentiating a new species from its twenty congeners known worldwide. In addition, the comparative morpho-analysis highlighted distant sympatric lineages with a notable morphotraits divergence of Corvospongilla lampaoensis sp. nov. vs Corvospongilla siamensis in two western tributaries of the Lower Mekong. The results from this study expand our knowledge of the order Spongillida adaptive radiation in Asia and fill a gap in the geographic range of the genus Corvospongilla in the Oriental-Indomalayan Region.

This paper investigates how healthcare professionals experience digital platforms in their work practices and how these relationships enable forms of emotional labour and contribute to shaping their emotional health. Methodologically, the contribution draws on audio-diaries kept by 15 healthcare professionals and a final semi-structured interview conducted with the same informants. The research material was analysed using open and axial coding techniques, in a grounded theory fashion. Findings provides meaningful insights to the literature on the emotional labour of healthcare professionals, as well as to studies on digital health and labour. Specifically, we show that participants associate different and even contrasting reflections and emotional states with their relationships with digital platforms. Thus, there is not exclusively one trajectory that can explain the implications of media uses, as different and potentially conflicting emotions coexist within the same experience. Given this scenario, we argue that it can be fruitful to use the lens of 'ambiguity' to scrutinise the ambivalences and tensions characterising platform experiences, and how emotional labour in healthcare intertwines with technological developments. Moreover, we advocate for the development of critical digital literacy skills among healthcare professionals., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

This paper reports the discovery of a small population of sponges in the Pigeon River of eastern Tennessee, USA, which were morphologically distinct from Spongillida of North America. A morphological comparative analysis resulted in the first Nearctic record of the genus Heterorotula with the description of a new species Heterorotulalucasi sp. nov. diverging from all other known species by its unique combinations of diagnostic morphotraits of spicules and gemmules. The new record enlarges the geographic range of the genus which has been known until now only from Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Japan (as an alien species), and from subequatorial Brazil (as subfossil remains). The discovery of a biogeographic enclave of Heterorotula in the southeastern United States contributes to the understanding of Porifera inland water biodiversity, biogeographic patterns, and adaptive morphotraits in the Nearctic and globally. Data confirm that the Appalachian region (Ordovician-Permian origin) of Tennessee and, in general, of North America have high levels of diversity and endemicity., (Renata Manconi, John Copeland, Stan Kunigelis, Roberto Pronzato.)

In some Porifera (Demospongiae: Keratosa), prototypes of the connective system are almost exclusively based on collagenic networks. We studied the topographic distribution, spatial layout, microtraits, and/or morphogenesis of these collagenic structures in Ircinia retidermata (Dictyoceratida: Irciniidae). Analyses were carried out on a clonal strain from sustainable experimental mariculture by using light and scanning electron microscopy. Histology revealed new insights on the widely diversified and complex hierarchical assemblage of collagenic structures. Key evolutionary novelties in the organization of sponge connective system were found out. The aquiferous canals are shaped as corrugate-like pipelines conferring plasticity to the water circulation system. Compact clusters of elongated cells are putatively involved in a nutrient transferring system. Knob-ended filaments are characterized by a banding pattern and micro-components. Ectosome and outer endosome districts are the active fibrogenetic areas, where exogenous material constitutes an axial condensation nucleus for the ensuing morphogenesis. The new data can be useful to understand not only the evolutionary novelties occurring in the target taxon but also the morpho-functional significance of its adaptive collagenic anatomical traits. In addition, data may give insights on both marine collagen sustainable applied researches along with evolutionary and phylogenetic analyses, thus highlighting sponges as a key renewable source for inspired biomaterials. Therefore, we also promote bioresources sustainable exploitation with the aim to provide new donors of marine collagen, thereby supporting conservation of wild populations/species., (© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Morphology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Microbial drug discovery programs rely heavily on accessing bacterial diversity from the environment to acquire new specialized metabolite (SM) lead compounds for the therapeutic pipeline. Therefore, knowledge of how commonly culturable bacterial taxa are distributed in nature, in addition to the degree of variation of SM production within those taxa, is critical to informing these front-end discovery efforts and making the overall sample collection and bacterial library creation process more efficient. In the current study, we employed MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry and the bioinformatics pipeline IDBac to analyze diversity within phylotype groupings and SM profiles of hundreds of bacterial isolates from two Eunapius fragilis freshwater sponges, collected 1.5 km apart. We demonstrated that within two sponge samples of the same species, the culturable bacterial populations contained significant overlap in approximate genus-level phylotypes but mostly nonoverlapping populations of isolates when grouped lower than the level of genus. Further, correlations between bacterial phylotype and SM production varied at the species level and below, suggesting SM distribution within bacterial taxa must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. Our results suggest that two E. fragilis freshwater sponges collected in similar environments can exhibit large culturable diversity on a species-level scale, thus researchers should scrutinize the isolates with analyses that take both phylogeny and SM production into account to optimize the chemical space entering into a downstream bacterial library., (© 2022. The Author(s).)