Morphological description (show/hide)
| Growth form predominantly vasiform, but varying from more-or-less symmetrical cup-shaped with small basal stalk, to vasiform with symmetrical or asymmetrical lamellae, to thickly encrusting plate-like, attached directly to substrate. Size up to 150mm high, 140mm maximum width. Lamella thickness variable, ranging from card thin to thick and rubbery, 1.0-3.5mm thick. | | Pale beige, olive-brown or reddish-brown aliv | | Texture flexible, compressible, velvet-like. | | Typically with convoluted, multiple lamellae inside cups or with digitate projections on exterior surface, but some specimens lack any surface ornamentation. | | Reticulate to plumo-reticulate mineral and fibre skeleton, with poorly differentiated axial and extra-axial regions. Reticulate skeleton predominant over plumose portion. Fibres in axial region only slightly condensed, forming an open reticulation, cored by uni- or paucispicular tracts of spicules. Extra-axial fibres reticulate, slightly plumose, paucispicular, whereas peripheral skeleton clearly diverges into plumose multispicular spicule bundles. Spongin fibres well developed, collagen abundant in mesohyl. | | membranous without specialised skeleton, but microscopically villose from protruding spicules from peripheral skeleton, usually forming multispicular plumose brushes. | | Variable length, relatively, slender, fusiform oxeas, moderately curved at centre, usually with very faintly stepped points.Type material: 172-239.6-305 x 2.5-9.5-16Other 79-152.6-189 x 1.6-5.9-11 | | 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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