Terpios viridis var. hyatti Keller, 1891

Van Soest, Rob W. M., 2024, Correcting sponge names: nomenclatural update of lower taxa level Porifera, Zootaxa 5398 (1), pp. 1-122 : 89

Terpios viridis var. hyatti Keller, 1891

Terpios viridis var. hyatti Keller, 1891: 320 (no illustration).

The variety was described by Keller from the W coast of Madagascar, approximate coordinates 16°S 44.3833°E, from shallow water (type material not in ZMB, unknown so far). It differs from the typical variety T. viridis Keller (1891: 319 , from Suakin, Southern Red Sea, approximate coordinates, 19.1333°N 37.3667°E, type material not in ZMB, unknown so far) in the color, dark grey vs. dark soft green in the typical variety. The skeleton of the variety had spicules more numerous than those of the typical variety. In view of the poor description and differences only in variable details as color and spicule density I propose to merge the varieties into a single species. This cannot be assigned to the genus Terpios Duchassaing & Michelotti, 1864 , as this genus has the tylostyle heads characteristically lobed (cf. Ŗtzler & Smith 1993: 384, fig. 1; Van Soest 2002: 243). Drawings of spicules of Terpios viridis Keller (1891 : pl. XVII fig. 24) show only subtylostyles with elongate heads and also styles without tyle. The description and illustrations of Keller remind strongly of Hemimycale arabica Ilan et al., 2004: 390 , a similarly thinly encrusting species with a variable spiculation (see also Van Soest et al. 1996 under the name Hemimycale sp. ). If the two were concluded to be synonyms, the name viridis would have priority over arabica . However, because I cannot examine Keller’s material in the absence of an identified type specimen, I propose to keep both as members of genus Hemimycale Burton, 1934a , but provisionally as Hemimycale viridis ( Keller, 1891) comb.nov., a species separate from H. arabica .