Morphological description of six species of Suberitida (Porifera: Demospongiae) from the unexplored north-eastern coast of Brazil, with emphasis on two new species

Abstract

AbstractThe Order Suberitida is defined as a group of marine sponges without an obvious cortex, a skeleton devoid of microscleres, and with a deletion of a small loop of 15 base pairs in the secondary structure of the 28S rDNA as a molecular synapomorphy. Suberitida comprises three families and 26 genera distributed worldwide, but mostly in temperate and polar waters. Twenty species were reported along the entire Brazilian coast, and although the north-eastern coast of Brazil seems to harbour a rich sponge fauna, our current knowledge is concentrated along the south-eastern Atlantic coast. A survey was implemented along the northern coast of Brazil, and the collection allowed the identification of six species belonging to the Order Suberitida. Two of them are considered new to science: Suberites purpura sp. nov., Hymeniacidon upaonassu sp. nov., and four, Halichondria (Halichondria) marianae Santos, Nascimento & Pinheiro, 2018, Halichondria (H.) melanadocia de Laubenfels, 1936, Suberites aurantiacus (Duchassaing & Michelotti, 1864), and Terpios fugax Duchassaing & Michelotti, 1864, are re-described. Taxonomic comparisons are made for Tropical Western Atlantic species and type species of the four genera. Finally, an identification key for the Western Atlantic Suberites species is provided.