Cyclacanthia n. g. (Demospongiae: Poecilosclerida: Latrunculiidae incertea sedis), a new genus of marine sponges from South African waters, and description of two new species
Author
Samaai, Toufiek
Author
Govender, Vasha
Author
Kelly, Michelle
text
Zootaxa
2004
725
1
18
journal article
10.5281/zenodo.169508
a9feae86-b894-488d-96b2-d4a858231aa0
11755326
169508
943247DB-0E16-4B89-9781-1CD3D336D6DC
Family
Latrunculiidae
Topsent, 1922
Diagnosis
. Massive semispherical, pedunculate, or thinly encrusting sponges, with areolate porefields and raised fistular oscules; texture in life soft, slightly elastic, compressible, leathery in preservative. Colour in life typically liquorice brown, dark green, olive, brown or khaki, often tinged with forestgreen or blue, or rarely pale beige to white. Structural megascleres are styles or anisostrongyles, rarely oxeas, these are frequently slightly irregular, sinuous, forming a compact tangential layer under the ectosome, and a widemeshed reticulation in the choanosome that, in some genera, is bounded by broad dense ascending (
Cyclacanthia
n.g.), or chamberforming tracts (
Tsitsikamma
Samaai & Kelly
). Microscleres are typically acanthose anisodiscorhabds, or “chessman” spicules, or isospinodiscorhabds (
Cyclacanthia
n.g.), bearing various apical and basal whorls (manubrium) of discrete spines that merge to various degrees to form crenulate discs; the subsidiary and median whorls (in the upper half and midway along the shaft, respectively) are variously present, and form crenulate to spinose discs. Microscleres are typically arranged in a compact or irregular palisade of spicules orientated perpendicular to the ectosome, their bases buried in the ectosomal membrane. Viviparous. Shallow sublittoral to abyssal, polar to warm temperate (modified from
Samaai & Kelly, 2002
).