Latrunculiidae Topsent, 1922

Samaai, Toufiek, Govender, Vasha & Kelly, Michelle, 2004, Cyclacanthia n. g. (Demospongiae: Poecilosclerida: Latrunculiidae incertea sedis), a new genus of marine sponges from South African waters, and description of two new species, Zootaxa 725, pp. 1-18 : 4

Family Latrunculiidae Topsent, 1922

Diagnosis. Massive semispherical, pedunculate, or thinly encrusting sponges, with areolate porefields and raised fistular oscules; texture in life soft, slightly elastic, compressible, leathery in preservative. Colour in life typically liquorice brown, dark green, olive, brown or khaki, often tinged with forest­green or blue, or rarely pale beige to white. Structural megascleres are styles or anisostrongyles, rarely oxeas, these are frequently slightly irregular, sinuous, forming a compact tangential layer under the ectosome, and a widemeshed reticulation in the choanosome that, in some genera, is bounded by broad dense ascending ( Cyclacanthia n.g.), or chamber­forming tracts ( Tsitsikamma Samaai & Kelly ). Microscleres are typically acanthose anisodiscorhabds, or “chessman” spicules, or isospinodiscorhabds ( Cyclacanthia n.g.), bearing various apical and basal whorls (manubrium) of discrete spines that merge to various degrees to form crenulate discs; the subsidiary and median whorls (in the upper half and midway along the shaft, respectively) are variously present, and form crenulate to spinose discs. Microscleres are typically arranged in a compact or irregular palisade of spicules orientated perpendicular to the ectosome, their bases buried in the ectosomal membrane. Viviparous. Shallow sublittoral to abyssal, polar to warm temperate (modified from Samaai & Kelly, 2002).