Aplysilla sp.

Goodwin, Claire & Brickle, Paul, 2012, Sponge biodiversity of South Georgia island with descriptions of fifteen new species, Zootaxa 3542, pp. 1-48 : 42

Aplysilla sp.

Material: Samples in 95% ethanol, tissue section and spicule preparation on slides. BELUM Mc 7584. Prion Island Site 1, South Georgia (54°001.590’S, 37°15.178’W); depth 17.6m; collected by C. Goodwin, D. Poncet, and P. Brewin, 19 th November 2010 . BELUM Mc 7592. Prion Island Site 2, South Georgia (54°001.862’S, 37° 15.032’W); depth 18m; collected by C. Goodwin, D. Poncet, and P. Brewin, 19 th November 2010 . BELUM Mc 7639. Bird Sound Site 2, South Georgia (54°01.149’S, 38° 01.026’W); depth 18m; collected by C. Goodwin, S. Cartwright and P. Brickle, 22 nd November 2010 .

External morphology: Lemon yellow sponge with prominent connules.

Skeleton: No spicules are present, skeleton consists of unbranched spongin fibres.

Remarks: This bright yellow species is similar in appearance to the European Aplysilla sulfurea Schulze, 1878 but has more pronounced connules. Burton (1930) reported Aplysilla sulfurea from 20m in West Cumberland Bay but given the distance from the type locality this identification would seem unlikely. As the taxonomy of keratose sponges, and particularly Southern Ocean and Antarctic Aplysilla species , is confused we have refrained from identifying our specimens to species level and merely note it prescence on South Georgia to alert future researchers to these specimens.