Cliona tropicalis Cruz-Barraza, Carballo, Bautista-Guerrero & Nava, 2011

Pacheco, Cristian, Carballo, José Luis, Cortés, Jorge, Segovia, Johanna & Trejo, Alejandra, 2018, Excavating sponges from the Pacific of Central America, descriptions and a faunistic record, Zootaxa 4370 (5), pp. 451-491 : 468

Cliona tropicalis Cruz-Barraza, Carballo, Bautista-Guerrero & Nava, 2011

Material examined. ICMYL.Ctr.133.FS: Bahía Culebra; 3 m, 19.XII.2012. coll. and det. Cristian Pacheco Solano.

External morphology and excavation. Material not sufficient to allow reliable description of external characters, erosion patterns or spicule sizes. Even so the species was recognized by the types of spicules.

Spicules consisting of megasclere tylostyles and microsclere spirasters, not pictured, see Cruz-Barraza et al. (2011) for further details.

Ecology. Found in dead Pocillopora sp. at 3 m depth.

Distribution and previous records. The species has previously been observed to occur along the Pacific coast of Mexico ( Cruz-Barraza et al. 2011; Vega 2012; Baja California, Oaxaca, Revillagigedo and Marias Islands). Scott et al. (1988) reported the morphologically similar Cliona viridis Schmidt, 1862 from Costa Rica, which however has to be assumed to be an erroneous identification and may possibly have been C. tropicalis . Lacking access to their material, we cannot confirm this assumption, and thus this publication is likely the first record for C. tropicalis occurring in Costa Rica ( Fig. 19 ).

Remarks. The material available for the present publication relied on only one specimen, which was too small to allow data collection for a full description. The identification was confirmed by the second author who has prior experience with this species and was an author on the original description ( Cruz-Barraza et al. 2011).

Figures

FIGURE 19. Distribution of Cliona tropicalis in the study area.