Zaid Qureshi publishes his first lead authored paper on the 'thorny corolla'

Archaeocyaths are a diverse group of ancient sponges that first appeared in the Lower Cambrian ~530 million years ago and faced extinction ~510 million years ago. In this short span of 20 million years, archaeocyaths constructed the world's first animal-built reef ecosystems and exhibited a vast degree of morphological diversity. One of the most enigmatic archaeocyaths is Yukonensis yukonensis, which constructed complex stacked chambers with unique bowl-shaped structures known as the 'thorny corolla'. Further adding to the complexity, the thorny corolla are ornamented with T-shaped ridges and have been hypothesized to serve as structural reinforcement. In this paper, Zaid Qureshi used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and fluid-structure interaction (FSI) to explore the functional morphology of this strange organism. Their CFD modelling demonstrates that the thorny corolla alters external flow, potentially influencing feeding. Meanwhile, the FSI analyses show that the T-shaped ridges along the thorny corolla experience increased stress, implying that their architecture did not enhance structural rigidity as previously hypothesized.

Qureshi, Z.A., Gibson, B.M., Darroch, S.A.F., & Laflamme, M. (2026). Functional morphology of the Cambrian archaeocyath sponge Yukonensis. PLoS One, 21(5): e0347476. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0347476