Echinoclathria vasa Lehnert, Stone & Heimler, 2006, sp. nov. ...

• Main Authors: Lehnert, Helmut, Stone, Robert, Heimler, Wolfgang
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2006
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Taxonomy; Animalia; Porifera; Demospongiae; Poecilosclerida; Microcionidae; Echinoclathria; Echinoclathria vasa; Alaska; Aleutian Islands
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6253493; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.6253493

Echinoclathria vasa sp. nov. (Fig. 4 a–c, Fig. 5 a–f) Description The sponge is stalked, with a vase shaped body (Figs. 4 a, b, c) growing on exposed bedrock. The stalk is 3 cm high x 0.5–0.8 cm wide, whereas the vase shaped body is 9 x 3 cm, walls 5–10mm in thickness. Consistency, except for the stalk, is very soft and elastic. The color changed from white to orange brown after freezing the sponge. Skeleton: The ectosome is a thin membrane packed with anchorate isochelae. The choanosome consists of a plumose arrangement of thick, shorter styles. The tracts are 60–135 µm in diameter and often branch in two or three tracts. Near the surface they are replaced by brushes of thin, longer styles, fanning out towards the surface, with many isochelae in between. The brushes of thinner styles overlap considerably and so produce a dense arrangement of spicules near the surface. Spicules: Megascleres are large thick styles (Fig. 5 a), measuring 760–920 x 16–21 µm, small thin styles (Fig. 5 b) with finely acanthose ... : Published as part of Lehnert, Helmut, Stone, Robert & Heimler, Wolfgang, 2006, New species of deep­sea demosponges (Porifera) from the Aleutian Islands (Alaska, USA), pp. 1-35 in Zootaxa 1250 on pages 7-10, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.173010 ...