I'm new to this forum and also somewhat of a beginner in modeling and I want to know if it's possible to take a sphere (vertex object) and link it to the end-cross-section of a spline object so that if I modify the spline object during animation the sphere moves along with it? Thanks.

Nope. You can convert a spline object to a vertex object and join a sphere to it in the vertex modeler. That's about as close as you can get. You can apply bones then though. -Kix

Or ... you can group the two objects and apply bones to both because bones can be applied to groups . But when you apply bones, your Spline object will automatically be converted to vertex, so if you want a clean conversion, you'd better make it yourself before you apply bones . litst