Аннотация:In the majority of metazoans, organismal integrity relies on epithelia, providing global control of cell behavior through a field of mechanical stress. How do demosponges maintain structural integrity and coordinate cell migration lacking true epithelia? To tackle this, we examined the cellular basis of budding in the carnivorous sponge Lycopodina hypogea and gemmule hatching in the freshwater sponge Ephydatia fluviatilis using light, confocal and electron microscopy. In Lycopodina, the migratory bud has a clear anterior-posterior axis. It develops an anterior migratory front consisted of flattened cells producing filopodia and lamellae. A supracellular actin network, including thick cables, armors the migratory front and connects anterior and posterior cells. The morphology of the bud and the architecture of its supracellular cytoskeleton resemble that of a migrating amoeboid cell. In Ephydatia, cells leaving the gemmule are organized into a radially spreading circular migratory front. The supracellular actin cables form a network passing through its edge and thick bundles oriented perpendicular to the edge. The migratory front is composed of several morphological modules and resembles several giant cells laterally connected and migrating together. The characteristics of cell behavior in our models are consistent with supracellular migration, a form of collective cell migration in which a group of cells behaves as a single 'supracell' (Shellard, Mayor, 2019). In both models, supracellular cytoskeletal structures ensure integrity across groups of migrating cells. Such supracellular coordination of cell behavior may have evolved before true epithelia, and been conserved as a mechanism for coordination of cell movements during development.