Cliona aff. euryphylle Topsent, 1888

Jaramillo, Karla B., Condor-Lujan, Baslavi, Longakit, Belinda, Rodriguez, Jenny, Thomas, Olivier P., McCormack, Grace & Hajdu, Eduardo, 2021, New records of Demospongiae (Porifera) from Reserva Marina El Pelado (Santa Elena, Ecuador), with description of Tedania (Tedania) ecuadoriensis sp. nov., ZooKeys 1011, pp. 101-120 : 101

Cliona aff. euryphylle Topsent, 1888 Figure 3A-E

Material examined.

CENAIM: 160510EP07-01, El Pelado Islet ('Bajo 40', -1.938217; -80.786669), REMAPE, Santa Elena, Ecuador, 12 m deep, collected by K. Jaramillo, 10 May 2016.

Habit

(Fig. 3A, B ). Encrusting alpha stage over 15 × 15 cm in area. Extended papillae with slightly elevated (up to 5 mm) oscula, up to 2 mm in diameter. Sponges form small patches, with a firm texture, even after removal from substrate. The colour in life is orange, turning to pale yellow in ethanol.

Skeleton.

Typical Cliona arrangement, with an ectosomal palisade of tylostyles, and the same spicules in a confused arrangement in the choanosome. Small spirasters are scarce in the papillae, but they occur abundantly dispersed in the choanosome.

Spicules.

Megascleres (Fig. 3C-E , Table 2 ). Tylostyles, 221-336 (267; n = 34) × 5-11 (7, n = 30), with pronounced rounded to oval heads. Microscleres (Fig. 3F ). Small and robust spirasters 8-35 (19; n = 32) × 3-8 (5; n = 27), with several large conical spines spiralling around the shaft, in helical and S-shaped forms; occasionally approaching amphiasters morphology.

Ecology and distribution.

Occurs from 5 to 10 m depth, over rocks, excavating shells, near red and brown algae, and slightly surrounded with sediment. Cliona euryphylle Topsent, 1888 was originally described from the Atlantic Ocean (Gulf of Mexico) by Topsent (1888), followed by a series of records from the Pacific: de Laubenfels (1954) in the Central Pacific, Bergquist (1968) in New Zealand; Carballo et al. (2004); Carballo et al. (2008); Vega (2012) in the Mexican Pacific; and Pacheco et al. (2018) in the Costa Rican Pacific.

Remarks.

Our preliminary results are inconclusive with regard to the identification of this Ecuadorian Cliona material, as no DNA sequence has been published for C. euryphylle , let alone for an Atlantic record of the species. It is also possible that the Ecuadorian species might belong to a distinct species, rather than suppose its crossing of the isthmus through the Panama Canal, as explicitly suggested by Pacheco et al. (2018). Previous records of C. euryphylle need to be revised in an integrative approach with more extensive sampling and molecular analyses with higher resolution capabilities.

Meanwhile, we can highlight what these populations share and what distinguishes them from one another in morphological terms. The first, but unlikely, biogeographical record of C. euryphylle is that by de Laubenfels (1954) from Micronesia, perhaps misled by his mistaken interpretation of Topsents’ type locality, assumed to be in the Eastern Pacific ( Topsent 1888). Even though the proposed transpacific track is unlikely, de Laubenfels’ brief description hampers further discussion without re-examining this material. Likely misguided by de Laubenfels’ pioneering transpacific range extension, Bergquist (1968) registered the species from New Zealand shallow waters. This is another unlikely record simply from its distance from previous localities. Furthermore, Bergquist offered some observations that might be interpreted to be suggestive of non-conspecificity, such as the larger dimensions of megascleres (up to 392 µm), and the abundance of microscleres. The tylostyles in the specimens described by Bergquist (1968) were reported to reach 17.5 µm in thickness, while Topsent’s original data indicates 5 µm. The same applies to the thickness of the spirasters in Bergquist’s specimens (≤ 9 µm thick, or ≤ 14 µm, if spines are included), while Topsent mentioned a thickness of 5 µm. These differences indicate that these populations do not belong to the same species.

However, a series of records exists that have been considered indicative of the species’ transisthmian distribution ( Carballo et al. 2004; Vega 2012; Pacheco et al. 2018). These report on sponges bearing tylostyles up to 368 µm long, and 11 µm thick ( Carballo et al. 2004; Vega 2012) respectively, but also, in the case of Pacific Costa Rican specimens, only up to 300 × 8 µm ( Pacheco et al. 2018), which considerably approach values originally reported by Topsent. On the other hand, spirasters appear to fall short from those of Topsent, up to nearly 50% longer. While the possibility cannot be discarded that these amphi-American populations belong to the same species, this should be verified by an alternative dataset, as suggested above.

Cliona aff. euryphylle shares the same spicules (thick and short spirasters) with four other Cliona spp., namely C. aethiopicus Burton, 1932, C. burtoni Topsent, 1932, C. caledoniae van Soest & Beglinger, 2009 and C. dioryssa (de Laubenfels, 1950). However, these species have unusual aspects of their spirasters, both in dimensions as well as outline, which suggest closer proximity between the Ecuadorian species and C. euryphylle . Cliona aethiopicus was considered closely allied to C. chilensis by Burton (1932), irrespective of Thiele’s (1905) hesitation regarding the origin of a few spirasters found in the encrusting Chilean specimen he studied. The presence of these spirasters in the type material of C. chilensis was not confirmed by Desqueyroux-Faúndez and van Soest (1997), which establishes both species’ spicule sets as markedly divergent. The former, with abundant microscleres. The latter, devoid of those. Contrastingly to what we have observed in the Ecuadorian C. aff. euryphylle , with varied microsclere morphologies, Burton (1932) did not mention any variation in the spirasters of C. aethiopicus .

Cliona burtoni has spirasters with proportionately much shorter spines, and much straighter axes when compared to the pattern seen in C. aff. euryphylle . Furthermore, the tylostyles with predominantly subterminal heads present in C. burtoni , are only occasionally present in the latter species. Cliona caledoniae has spirasters bearing extremely stout and somewhat obtuse spines that differ considerably from the pointier spines seen in C. aff. euryphylle . Finally, C. dioryssa 's tylostyles approach 400 µm, and the species has two categories of spirasters of rather varied morphology, reaching over 40 µm in length, also appearing distinct from those in C. aff. euryphylle .

Figures

Figure 3. Cliona aff. euryphylle Topsent, 1888 A, B specimen alive in situ (CENAIM 160510 EP 07 - 01) collected at El Pelado Marine Reserve C large tylostyles D heads of tylostyles E small tylostyles F different sizes of spirasters with large spines. Scale-bars: 1 cm (A); 5 cm (B); 100 µm (C-E); 10 µm (F).