Oceanapia Norman, 1869

Ott, B., Mcdaniel, N. & Humphrey, E., 2024, Fourteen new species of demosponges (Porifera) from three coastal fjords in southern British Columbia, Canada, Zootaxa 5463 (2), pp. 151-200 : 183

Genus Oceanapia Norman, 1869

The definition of Oceanapia used here is per Desqueyroux-Faúndez & Valentine (2002[2004]) as taken from de Weerdt (1985) and modified by Campos et al. (2005) to include strongyles as well as oxeas. Worldwide there are 91 accepted species of Oceanapia (de Voogd, et al. 2023). Based on world reports, Oceanapia is a cosmopolitan genus mostly in temperate and tropical waters reported from the Atlantic (north and south), Mediterranean, Caribbean, Adriatic, Indian Ocean, Red Sea, Pacific (north and south). One species is reported from the East Greenland Shelf, Oceanapia tuber ( Lundbeck, 1902) . In the north Pacific Oceanapia has been reported for Japan in the west Pacific and the Gulf of California in the east Pacific. Our report extends the Northeast Pacific range to central BC. While there are gaps in the depth record, the genus appears to inhabit depths from intertidal to over 1400 m.

Oceanapia species are fistulate although fistulae may not be evident in some encrusting species; many are microhispid; none hirsute. Habitus is massive, tubular, may be pedunculate, or relatively thickly encrusting (to several mm). Oceanapia tends to encrust dead organic substrates where available (Cerrano, et al. 2007), e.g., coralline algae, bryozoans, dead coral, algal-covered ropes. It may also inhabit loose sand ( Cerrano et al. 2007); one BC species described here encrusts bedrock. Colour is variable and there are nearly as many colour shades as species. Consistency is variable among species from fragile through softly spongy, brittle to hard. The choanosomal skeleton is reticulate. The ectosome varies greatly among species from tangential spicules in a single layer to plumose to reticulate to multilayered. Most species have only oxea megascleres. A few have strongyles in addition to or instead of oxeas and a few have microscleres. We describe two new species of Oceanapia from BC fjords.