Sponges are known to possess remarkable reconstitutive and regenerative abilities ranging
from common wounding or body part regeneration to more impressive re-building of a functional
body from dissociated cells. Among the four sponge classes, Homoscleromorpha is
notably the only sponge group to possess morphologically distinct basement membrane
and specialized cell-junctions, and is therefore considered to possess true epithelia. The
consequence of this peculiar organization is the predominance of epithelial morphogenesis
during ontogenesis of these sponges. In this work we reveal the underlying cellular mechanisms
used during morphogenesis accompanying ectosome regeneration in the homoscleromorph
sponge model: Oscarella lobularis. We identified three main sources of novel
exopinacoderm during the processes of its regeneration and the restoration of functional
peripheral parts of the aquiferous system in O. lobularis: (1) intact exopinacoderm surrounding
the wound surface, (2) the endopinacoderm from periphe