Agelas citrina Gotera & Alcolado, 1987

Rützler, Klaus, Piantoni, Carla, Van, Rob W. M. & Díaz, Cristina, 2014, Diversity of sponges (Porifera) from cryptic habitats on the Belize barrier reef near Carrie Bow Cay, Zootaxa 3805 (1), pp. 1-129 : 76

Agelas citrina Gotera & Alcolado, 1987

Synonymy and references. Agelas citrina Gotera & Alcolado, 1987: 2 , figs 1-2; Parra-Velandia et al., 2014: 331, figs. 1C, 1G, 13 (including synonymy).

Material. USNM 1191322, Carrie Bow Cay forereef slope, 15–35 m; K. Ruetzler, col. 26 Apr 1974. USNM 1191323, Carrie Bow Cay forereef slope, 21 m; C. Piantoni, col. 27 Jun 2007. USNM 1191324, Carrie Bow Cay forereef slope, 21 m; C. Piantoni, col. 2 Jul 2007. USNM 1229096, Curlew Bank forereef slope (wall), small cave, 20 m; C. Piantoni and M. Parrish, col. 23 Aug 2012.

External morphology. Small (2–6 cm diameter) cushions with smooth or knobby surface structure and few (1–3) circular oscular openings of 2–4 mm diameter. The color is yellow to yellow orange.

Skeleton structure. As usual in this genus, the skeleton consists of coarse, ascending primary and interconnecting secondary and tertiary spongin fibers. The fibers are partly cored, partly echinated by the spicules.

Spicules. Characteristic acanthostyles with verticillated spines. Spicules in this species are the longest of all agelasids examined. They measure148–360 x 18–20 (226 x 19) Μm with 14–29 (17) whorls of spines. The longer spicules tend to show a reduction of spine length and density along the center portion of the shaft.

Ecology. Collected from lower surfaces of platy coral rock ( Agaricia ) and inside a framework cave, 15– 35 m.

Distribution. Common on reefs throughout the Caribbean region ( Parra-Velandia et al., 2014)

Comments. The length of spicules in our material exceeds that of all specimens previously studied in Belize and elsewhere in the Caribbean ( Parra-Velandia et al., 2014). Unlike these authors, we find acanthostyles with reduced spines along the middle of the shaft, a characteristic thought to be unique to Agelas schmidti ( Wilson, 1902) and A. sventres (Lehnert & van Soest, 1996) (see below). However, examining illustrations and specimens of other, not yellow-orange species, for instance, Agelas conifera ( Schmidt, 1870) ( Wiedenmayer, 1977) , we find similar spine reductions. This raises the possibilities that the morphological aberration is age- or environmentrelated and not a useful taxonomic feature.