Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2014 11:51:47 -0500
From: “Pawlik, Joseph” <pawlikj@uncw.edu>
Subject: [Coral-List] Sponge Guide 3rd Edition!
To: “‘coral-list@coral.aoml.noaa.gov'”
<coral-list@coral.aoml.noaa.gov>, “PORIFERA@JISCMAIL.AC.UK”
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Hello Colleagues,

My collaborators and I are pleased to announce the third edition of The Sponge Guide, a web-based, image-intensive key to the sponges of the Caribbean..  The citation and link are:

Zea, S., Henkel, T.P., and Pawlik, J.R. 2014.  The Sponge Guide: a picture guide to Caribbean sponges.  3rd Edition. Available online at:
www.spongeguide.org<http://www.spongeguide.org/>.

We now have over 230 species-morphs represented in the guide, with over 2,100 images.
And in this update, we include for the first time composite images of sponge skeletal elements (spicules and collagen fibers), which are important for the definitive identification of some sponge species.  We thank the Fulbright Scholarship Program for helping to fund a year-long stay by Sven Zea at UNCW to work on this update, and NSF for additional support.

Since inception, the Sponge Guide has had nearly 100,000 users and over 475,000 page-views from 178 countries and all 50 US states!

We are pleased that the Guide has been so well received by users ranging from sponge specialists to students in field courses, to sport-divers wanting to know the identity of the beautiful sponges that are so common on Caribbean reefs.  We look forward to future enhancements!

Regards,
Sven Zea, Timothy Henkel, Joseph Pawlik

**************************************************************
Joseph R. Pawlik, Professor,
Dept. of Biology and Marine Biology
UNCW Center for Marine Science
5600 Marvin K Moss Lane
Wilmington, NC  28409
Office:(910)962-2377; Cell:(910)232-3579
Website: http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/index.html
PDFs: http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/pubs2.html