Morphological description (show/hide)
| Flabellate growth form, 110-400mm high, with massive, lobate, irregularly planar or globular branching, up to 350mm wide, and branches consist of relatively thick, flattened planar or buttressed lamellae, 4-11mm thick, with irregular margins, sponge attached to substrate directly or by small basal stalk, 20-90mm long, up to 40mm diameter. | | Bright orange-brown alive (Munsell 2.5YR 7/8) | | Oscules and pores not seen in preserved material.. | | Fleshy, conulose, rough surface, conules irregular, 3-5mm high, solitary or joined to form meandering surface ridges, texture rubbery, compressible, easily torn. | | Axial skeleton condensed into several multispicular bundles, 100-250um wide, running more-or-less longitudinally through lamellae, fully cored by long slender styles, bound together by very light spongin fibre, and interconnected at irregular angles by vaguely plumose, ascending, paucispicular extra-axial tracts of styles or individual spicules. Fibre reticulation relatively close meshed, with lacunae forming elongate oval chambers, up to 300 x 70um. Collagen in mesohyl relatively light compared with ectosomal region. | | membranous band of heavy collagen, 100-200um wide, slightly more darkly pigmented than choanosomal region, with extra-axial spicules protruding only sparsely. | | Single category of style present, although variable in thickness, occassionally strongylote, styles relatively long, slender or robust, usually slightly curved symmetrically or towards basal end, sharply pointed, fusiform, with evenly rounded base (406-(511.7)-601 x 6-(16.9)-22). | | Nil. |
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Reference (show/hide)
| Erpenbeck D, Hall K, Alvarez B, Büttner G, Sacher K, Schätzle S, Schuster A, Vargas S, Hooper JNA, Wörheide G (in press) The phylogeny of halichondrid demosponges: past and present re-visited with DNA-barcoding data. The phylogeny of halichondrid demosponges: past and present re-visited with DNA-barcoding data. Organisms Diversity & Evolution. |
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