Stelletta makushina Lehnert & Stone, 2014, n. sp.

• Main Authors: Lehnert, Helmut, Stone, Robert P.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Taxonomy; Animalia; Porifera; Demospongiae; Astrophorida; Ancorinidae; Stelletta; Stelletta makushina; Bering Sea; Aleutian Islands
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/5690535; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5690535

Stelletta makushina n. sp. (Fig. 2) Material examined. Holotype, ZSM 20140111, specimen in ethanol, collected by Robert Stone with a camera array towed from the FV Sea Storm; 8 August 2012, 177 m depth, 4 km NNE of Bishop Point, Unalaska Island, eastern Aleutian Islands, Bering Sea (54 °00.499” N, 166 ° 56.136 ” W). Attached to a large cobble. Bottom water temperature = 4.2 °C. Description. Irregularly ovoid sponge (45 mm x 38 mm x 32 mm) with a rough surface (Fig. 2 A, left). Sponge is white in life but covered with a light brown spicule mat. No oscules visible, possibly due to dense layer of triaene cladomes above the surface. The consistency is hard, only slightly elastic. The megascleres protruding above the sponge surface pass through a pigmented, relatively thick, probably collagenous cortex, 500–700 µm in diameter (Fig. 2 B). Long triaenes protrude through this cortex up to 2.5 mm above the surface (Figs. 2 B & C). The cladomes of the outermost protruding triaenes (Fig. 2 C) end approximately in the same height, forming a dense, rough surface. Spicules are long anatriaenes (Fig. 2 D) up to 9800 x 47 –58 µm, clads 90 x 42 –55 µm, ortho- and plagiotriaenes (Fig. 2 E) often with reduced, club-shaped clads (Figs. 2 F–I) and often occurring as di- and monaenes (Figs. 2 H–I), the long clads are recurved (Fig. 2 F), wavy (Fig. 2 C) or straight and sometimes protruding and merging into protriaenes (Fig. 2 J), straight rhabds, 2380–7320 x 180–220 µm, clads up to 480 x 200 µm, relatively short dichotriaenes (Fig. 2 K), rhabds 780–930 x 85 –98 µm, straight oxeas 4460–7600 x 30 –160 µm, possibly occurring in a thick and a thin category, and finely acanthose oxyasters (Fig. 2 L) 10–14 µm in diameter. Discussion. Stelletta makushina n. sp. differs from all other known species of Stelletta (Table 1) and has peculiar ortho- to plagiotriaenes which have a high percentage of reduced, club-shaped clads and very long rhabdomes (up to 7.32 mm). Similar reduced cladomes occur in Stelletta atrophia Hoshino 1981 (Table 1) ...