Welcome to the porifera.net lab of Dr Michael Nickel. We mainly explore the functional anatomy and physiology of sponges (Porifera), within a broader comparative context of the basal metazoan phylogenetic framework. The lab is part of the Institut für Spezielle Zoologie und Evolutionsbiologie mit Phyletischem Museum at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena since October 2007.

Quick links to some answers:
Who is Michael Nickel? Publications of porifera.net lab? What are the research topics of porifera.net lab?

If you want to know where we are, have a look on this Google Map.

Latest News:

In our latest pulication, we described the new sponge species Tethya leysae (Demospongiae, Hadromerida, Tethyiidae) which can be found in Barkley Sound, Vancouver Island, British Clumbia, Canada, near Bamfield. The name refers to Sally P. Leys, a Canadian zoologists (Image to the right).

Heim, I and Nickel, M (2010), "Description and molecular phylogeny of Tethya leysae sp. nov. (Porifera, Demospongiae, Hadromerida) from the Canadian Northeast Pacific with remarks on the use of microtomography in sponge taxonomy", Zootaxa, 2422: 1-21.

The article was published under Open Access license in zootaxa. Please feel free to download the PDF directly from Zootaxa.

An article published in March 2010 in Invertebrate Biology. The review paper deals with integration mechanisms in the asynaptic, nerve-less sponges and discusses implications for the evolution of synaptic nervous systems in the Eumetazoa. This article is dedicated in Memoriam Max Pavans de Cecatty (1927 - 2009):

Nickel, M (2010), "Evolutionary emergence of synaptic nervous systems: what can we learn from the non-synaptic, nerveless Porifera?", Invertebrate Biology, 129: 1-16.

(See bibliographic data in our database )

A PDF-file is available upon request , if you do not have direct access to the journal.

In collaboration with the Thuringian University and State Library book scanning service in Jena, one of our students scanned all three volumes of Haeckels monograph on calcisponges. It is likely that Ernst Haeckel himself donated this particular three volumes to our library. All volumes are now available through the Digital Library Thuringia (dbt - Digitale Bibliothek Thüringen).

Please feel free to download PDF copies from the dbt server: