PODOSPONGIIDAE de Laubenfels

Sim-Smith, Carina & Kelly, Michelle, 2011, Two new genera in the family Podospongiidae (Demospongiae: Poecilosclerida) with eight new Western Pacific species, Zootaxa 2976, pp. 32-54 : 33

Family PODOSPONGIIDAE de Laubenfels

Podospongiidae de Laubenfels, 1936 : 165.

Diagnosis. Encrusting, digitate, branching, massive, tubular, vasiform, and stipitate sponges, with microscopically smooth conulose surface and membranous oscules. Texture ranges from tough and rubbery, to soft and fleshy. Colouration ranges from brown to orange to maroon to brilliant reddish orange, and variations of creamy white in all deepwater species. Megascleres are typically strongyloxeas, frequently polytylote, and ‘oxeas’ that are diversely modified to irregularly curved anisostrongyles and anisoxeas. Microscleres are a variety of spinorhabds in one or two size categories, and aciculospinorhabds. The spinorhabd typically has a basal whorl of spines, a central whorl of spines that may be partitioned or fused, and an apical whorl of spines that are often bifurcate. The spinorhabd apex may be a short tuft or crown of spines, or composed of single or multiple elongated spines, or serrated spires (aciculospinorhabds). The spinorhabd is typically asymmetrical but may be symmetrical (diplospinorhabd). The aciculospinorhabd typically has an apical projection that may take the form of a spine or spines, a sculpted spire, or spines of irregular length that bristle from the apical tuft. Developmental stages of the spinorhabd, the protospinorhabd, may be diagnostic in the case of Sigmosceptrella , Negombata , and Podospongia , in which the protospinorhabd is sigma-shaped. The choanosomal skeleton is typically dominated by robust primary fibres or tracts that may be interconnected by occasional short secondary fibres at the base of the sponge, but these are generally absent. In thin encrusting genera the primary megasclere tracts arise from the base of the sponge to emerge as simple brushes in the ectosome. In Diacarnus and Sigmosceptrella , the primary tracts diverge into one or more tracts that radiate towards the ectosome, dividing into smaller characteristic ‘starbursts’ of brushes, the overall pattern being umbelliform. In Negombata , minor tracts diverge above a spongin-dominated, square, tight-meshed choanosomal reticulation. In stipitate species tracts radiate from a centrum into the globular mass and stalk. The ectosome and choanosome are generally packed with spinorhabds (emended from Kelly & Samaai 2002).