Sycandra tabulata Schuffner 1877, nom.nov.

• Main Authors: Van, Rob W. M., De, Nicole J.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2018
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Taxonomy; Animalia; Porifera; Calcarea; Leucosolenida; Grantiidae; Sycandra; Sycandra tabulata; Northeast Atlantic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5966818; http://treatment.plazi.org/id/386CC616DCE7A5A4FF678C2AFD32FA39

Sycandra tabulata Schuffner, 1877 Schuffner (1877: 422, pl. 25 fig. 11) described this Sycon species from Mauritius, comparing it with Sycon elegans (Bowerbank, 1845). Its skeleton is distinct only by the thick bushes of thin fusiforms diactines (140 x 4 µm) in the distal cones of the radial tubes. Borojević (1967) in turn compared his record of Sycon elegans from South Africa with Schuffner’s species. Since S. elegans is a Northeast Atlantic species, this may be interpreted as a suggestion that the South African record may indeed be better assigned to Sycon tabulatum. Schuffner’s combination is preoccupied: it is a junior primary homonym of Sycandra tabulata Haeckel, 1872. Dendy & Row (1913) noticed this already, but assumed both homonyms belonged to Sycon elegans . In view of the fact that Bowerbank's and Haeckel's specimens were from the Mediterranean, while Schuffner's was from Mauritius this synonymy is judged to be unlikely. We propose here to rename Schuffner’s species as Sycon oscari nom.nov . The name is given to honor Oscar Schuffner, the author of its original name. Published as part of Van, Rob W. M. & De, Nicole J., 2018, Calcareous sponges of the Western Indian Ocean and Red Sea, pp. 1-160 in Zootaxa 4426 (1) on page 150, DOI:10.11646/zootaxa.4426.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/1271239