Simulating the Geometric Growth of the Marine Sponge Crella incrustans

Abstract

<p>Understanding how marine sponges grow is an important field of study for marine biologists, as it helps them predict how a marine sponge will grow under certain environmental conditions. Simulating the growth is one of the most powerful ways to help marine biologists understand sponge growth, as many scenarios can be simulated with different simulation parameters using few resources. This thesis describes a way to simulate and grow geometric models of the marine sponge Crella incrustans. The simulation improves upon state-of-the-art procedural modelling work by simulating fluid flow and nutrient dispersion in the ocean, simulating sponge growth, and changing the skeletal architecture of the sponge in the growth model. The change in skeletal architecture and other simulation parameters are then evaluated qualitatively against photos of a real-life Crella incrustans sponge and state-of-the-art work, and the performance of the simulation is qualitatively evaluated by comparing simulation times for different parameters. The results support the hypothesis that changing the skeletal architecture from radiate accretive to Halichondrid produces a sponge model which is closer in resemblance to the photos than the prior work's sponge model.</p>