Question

In order for sponges to have evolved what must have happened

Answer 1

Hello @Melodyn
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Do you have any guesses?

Answer 2

Colonial flagellates gained an evolutionary ability of multicellularity and lost the ability of mobility. These incidences allowed them to progress into sessile metazoans of Porifera, i.e. sponges. Sponges and choanoflagellates are still related, i.e. distant cousins, because they still feed on similar bacteria and have similar cellular structures.

Answer 3

@melodyn @Cardinal_Carlo I believe the question may be a bit more fundamental. The "unit" of evolution, the biological construct that is being acted upon by random or non-random evolutionary forces is the gene (alleles). Do you know what alleles are @melodyn? I'll help more once I hear back.