Latrunculia lunaviridis, Samaai, Toufiek, Gibbons, Mark J., Kelly, Michelle & Davies-Coleman, Mike, 2003

Samaai, Toufiek, Gibbons, Mark J., Kelly, Michelle & Davies-Coleman, Mike, 2003, South African Latrunculiidae (Porifera: Demospongiae: Poecilosclerida): descriptions of new species of Latrunculia du Bocage, Strongylodesma Lévi, and Tsitsikamma Samaai & Kelly, Zootaxa 371, pp. 1-26 : 10-13

publication ID	https://doi.org/ 10.5281/zenodo.156901
DOI	https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6276865
persistent identifier	https://treatment.plazi.org/id/03FE87D7-670F-FF9E-FEB5-FC80BB2EEAE0
treatment provided by	Plazi
scientific name	Latrunculia lunaviridis
status	sp. nov.

Treatment

Latrunculia lunaviridis View in CoL sp. nov. ( Figs 3 View FIGURE 3 A, 4B, 5B)

Holotype material. BMNH 1996.7.3.6: Ouderkraal, Southpaw, Cape Town, South Africa, 33 59’S, 18 22’E, collected by P. Coetzee, University of Port Elizabeth, 25 February 1996, 17– 20 m, a fragment of the type has been deposited in the South African Museum, Cape Town ( SAM H 4960).

Paratype material. SAM H 4960: Ouderkraal, Southpaw, Cape Town, South Africa, 33 59’S, 18 22’E, collected by P. Coetzee, University of Port Elizabeth, 27 February 1996, 17– 20 m; SAM H 4961: Ouderkraal, Southpaw, Cape Town, South Africa, 33 59’S, 18 22’E, collected by P. Coetzee, University of Port Elizabeth, 25 February 1996, 17– 20 m; SAM H 4972: Hout Bay, near the wreck of British “The Maori”, sunk in 1909, ~ 2.5 nm offshore and north of Hout Bay, west coast near Cape Town, South Africa, 34° 01' 83''S, 18° 18' 27''E, collected by Lynden West, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, California, 30 January, 2003, 28– 29 m; SAM H 4973: Vulcan Rock, Hout Bay, South Africa, 34° 03' 98''S, 18° 18' 54''E, collected by Lynden West, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, California, 27 January, 2003, 28– 32 m.

Additional material. BMNH 2002.9.25.1: Cape Point, South Africa, labelled ‘ Latrunculia sp. Kirkpatrick No. 107, in Gilchrist Collection at BMNH’, no other details are available (Clare Valentine personal communication).

Description. Spherical sponge, 4 x 4 x 4 cm (length x width x height) ( Fig. 3 View FIGURE 3 A). Surface smooth, velvety, with low cylindrical oscules, 0.1 mm high, 1–4 mm wide, and numerous thick lipped craterlike areolate porefields, 2–6 mm wide, 0.1 mm high, covered with a distinct netlike poral membrane. Texture compressible, leathery. Colour in life pale olive green; in preservative, dark brownish green. This species has been found to contain biologically active pyrroloquilonine alkaloids, discorhabdins A & H and 3dihydrodiscorhabdins (Hooper et al., 1996; Beukes, 2000; Samaai, 2002; Antunes et al., unpublished dataa) ( Table 2).

Source 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Genus Latrunculia du Bocage

L. lunaviridis x x x L. microacanthoxea x x

Genus Strongylodesma Lévi

S. algoaensis x x x x

Genus Tsitsikamma Samaai & Kelly

T. favus x x x x T. pedunculata x

1=Discorhabdin A; 2=Discorhabdin D; 3=Discorhabdin H; 4=3Dihydrodiscorhabdin C; 5=3Dihydrodiscorhabdin B; 6=Tsitsikammamine A; 7=14Bromodiscorhabdin C; 8=Tsitsikammamine A; 9=Tsitsikammamine B

Spicules. Megascleres— Styles: Smooth, straight, centrally thickened, hastate, occasionally polytylote; 357 (336–384) x 12 m. Microscleres— Anisodiscorhabds (Fig. 4B): Manubrium an expanded spinose base, shaft 10 m long, 9 m wide, median whorl 30 m diameter, subsidiary whorl 30 m diameter, more or less perpendicular to the shaft. Apical whorl slants upwards ending in a crownlike tuft of conical spines, parallel to the shaft axis. Whorls are notched along the rim and divided into four segments, each segment possessing a denticulate margin of four spines; 54 (53–60) x 9 (7.2–9.6) m.

Skeleton. The choanosomal skeleton is an irregular polygonalmeshed reticulation formed by wispy tracts of smooth styles with no distinction between the primary and secondary tracts ( Fig. 5 View FIGURE 5 B). The tracts range in width from 150–180 m in thickness, and form meshes that are 250 m wide. In the deeper choanosome, tracts are robust and diverge towards the surface where the spicules tend to be vertically arranged and radiate in plumose tracts 280–300 m wide. Numerous anisodiscorhabds and abundant interstitial megascleres are scattered throughout between the tracts. The surface of the ectosome is lined with a palisade of anisodiscorhabds, these are absent from the ectosome of the areolate porefields. Beneath the ectosomal palisade is a dense paratangential layer of megascleres, approximately 300 m deep. This layer is present in the oscular fistules and areolate structures.

Ecology. Found with coral, anemones and other sponges on rock flats, with a fine covering of sand, 17– 20 m.

Etymology. Named for the moonlike (luna) green (viridis) appearance of the sponge in life.

Remarks. Latrunculia lunaviridis sp. nov. is distinguished morphologically from L. biformis (Kirkpatrick) in the possession of much broader thicklipped areolate porefields with a distinct poral membrane, and in the pale olive colouration. In terms of spiculation, megasclere and microsclere dimensions are considerably smaller in L. lunaviridis , and this species lacks the aciculodiscorhabds that characterise L. biformis . The anisodiscorhabds of L. biformis are also characteristically phyllamentous and the ‘disc’ curves upwards. Thus far, L. lunaviridis sp. nov. is known only from the Western Cape region, whereas L. biformis was found in Tsitsikamma National Park in the Eastern Cape region.

Uriz (1988) described a comparatively deepwater population of what was identified as Latrunculia brevis Dendy and Ridley, 1886 , off the coast of Namibia, in about 140 m. L. lunaviridis sp. nov. clearly differs from these Namibian sponges, described as dark brown with elevated mammiform areolate pore fields. The primary character that differentiates these species, however, is the form of the anisodiscorhabd in L. lunaviridis sp. nov., which has median and subsidiary whorls separated into four ‘leaves’ with 4 teeth on each margin. In the Namibian sponges the whorls form three ‘leaves’, each with 8 marginal teeth. The microscleres of the Namibian sponges also have two distinctive spines above the manubrium ( Uriz 1988).

L. lunaviridis sp. nov. is similar to several recently described New Zealand species ( Alvarez et al., 2002). L. kaakaariki , L. wellingtoniensis , L. kaikoura , and L. millerae are all described as green in life, and all are semispherical sponges. These sponges differ in the morphology of the inhalent porefields, which in the former two species are expansive regions covering a large surface area of the sponge surface. Moreover, the megascleres are larger, and the microscleres considerably shorter than in L. lunaviridis . New Zealand species L. kaikoura and L. millerae have megascleres of similar dimensions to L. lunaviridis , but again the microscleres are considerably shorter. Of note is thickness of the styles in L. lunaviridis , being almost double the thickness of megascleres in the New Zealand species.