Timea hallezi var. crassa sensu Levi 1952
Creators: name: Van Soest, Rob W. M.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Porifera
Demospongiae
Tethyida
Timeidae
Timea
Timea hallezi
Timea hallezi var. crassa sensu lévi, 1952

description: Timea hallezi var. crassa sensu Lévi, 1952
(Fig. 8K)
Hymedesmia hallezi var. crassa Topsent, 1900: 120, pl.III fig. 10.
Timea crassa; Topsent 1925b: 6.
? Timea crassa; Pulitzer-Finali 1983: 508; Lehnert & Heimler 2001: 218.
Timea hallezi var. crassa; sensu Lévi 1952: 46, fig. 9.
I list here a complicated case (see also above under Timea crassa), based on a mistake made by Lévi (1952: 44-46) on Timea material from Senegal. He described T. crassa as similar to the species described by Topsent (1925b), but Topsent based his name on the original combination Hymedesmia hallezi var. crassa Topsent, 1900. This taxon was later elevated by Topsent (1925b: 6) to species rank as Timea crassa with several slight differentiations. The improved description was not based on the type material from the Channel area, but on new specimens collected in the Étang de Thau, an inland lake branched off from the Mediterranean. Apart from differentiated small (interpreted as ‘juvenile’ spicules) and large asters, he also noted that the tylostyles of the type specimen were more robust, than those of the Mediterranean specimens. Lévi (1952) not only described Senegalese material from Baie de Hannan, 14.7167°N 17.4297°W, depth 17-18 m, as T. crassa, but also described an apparently different Timea taxon as T. hallezi var. crassa from Pointe Bernard, Dakar, Senegal (14.6541°N 17,43°W, no depth provided), as if that would be different from T. crassa. The bottom line is that Lévi believed that the original T. hallezi var. crassa from the Channel region was a different species from T. crassa sensu Topsent, 1925b from the Western Mediterranean. Nomenclaturally, Timea hallezi var. crassa sensu Lévi, 1952 must be called T. crassa (Topsent, 1900), and T. crassa sensu Lévi, 1952 (possibly conspecific with Topsent’s (1925b) specimens from Étang de Thau) must have a new name. I propose Timea levii nom.nov. to replace the latter combination (cf. also above). Type material has not been ascertained, but it should be in MNHN; type locality is Baie de Hannan, Senegal (cf. above).
Regardless, of this new name, it is necessary to revise the Timea crassa material in order to establish the conspecificity of the various recorded populations over its apparent extensive range.
Pulitzer-Finali (1983) described T. crassa from Southern Italy with two distinct types of asters, small (7–8µm) tylasters and larger (12–22 µm) truncated oxyasters. It is unclear whether this record is correctly identified, as tylasters are not mentioned by Topsent (nor by Lévi). Lehnert & Heimler (2001: 219) keyed T. crassa out using Pulitzer-Finali’s description. Both ignored or overlooked Lévi’s records of T. crassa and T. hallezi var. crassa from Senegal.
description: Published as part of Van Soest, Rob W. M., 2024, Correcting sponge names: nomenclatural update of lower taxa level Porifera, pp. 1-122 in Zootaxa 5398 (1) on page 79, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5398.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/10494167