Geodia gibberosa Lamarck 1815
Creators: name: Rützler, Klaus
name: Piantoni, Carla
name: Van, Rob W. M.
name: Díaz, Cristina
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2014
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Porifera
Demospongiae
Astrophorida
Geodiidae
Geodia
Geodia gibberosa

description: Geodia gibberosa Lamarck, 1815
(Figure 2 c)
Synonymy and references. Geodia (Geodia) gibberosa Lamarck, 1815: Wiedenmayer (1977): 178, fig. 172, pl. 38: 2, 3. Geodia gibberosa Lamarck, 1815: Uriz (2002b): 138, fig. 6.
Material. USNM 32872 Columbus Cay cave, 18–25 m; G. Hendler, I. Macintyre, P. Kier, T. Rath and C. Clark col. 21 Mar 1979. USNM 1228918, Columbus Cay Cave, 21 m deep, 7 m from sinkhole entrance; I. Macintyre col. 6 Mar 1987. USNM 1228919, 1228920, Curlew Bank, forereef cave, 20 m; C. Piantoni col. 2 Jul 2007.
External morphology. Irregularly massive (10 cm diameter), cone shaped (hanging from cave ceiling, point down: 14 cm height, 6 cm diameter at base), or cluster of branches (also hanging from cave ceiling, 2–11 cm length, 1.5–2.5 cm thickness). Surface rugose but smooth, oscula in groups (cribiporal, 2–4 cm), with individual oscula 1–4 mm in diameter. Tiny ostia (<0.5 mm) cribiporal and scattered. Color white, more or less brownish with increasing habitat exposure to light.
Skeleton structure. There is a cortex, about 1 mm thick, mainly composed of sterrasters, accompanied in places by small cortical oxeas; tiny strongylasters occur in the outermost layer, just below the pinacoderm. Megascleres (oxeas, triaenes) are arranged in bundles, radially oriented near the periphery, with oxeas often protruding beyond the surface, triaenes with cladomes positioned at the inner cortex; in the inner choanosome, oxeas occur without orientation, along with asteroid microscleres.
Spicules. Principal oxeas, straight or curved, sharply pointed at both ends, except for some rare styloid modifications where one end is rounded: 1000–1690 x 10–35 (1324 x 26) Μm; triaenes (ortho- or plagiotriaenes), length x width: 900–1300 x 18–50 (1104 x 41) Μm, clad length: 70–215 (136) Μm; cortical oxeas, with one end tapering but rounded (strongyloxeas): 160–300 x 3–5 (238 x 4) Μm; sterrasters, spherical to slightly depressed (not including developmental (spherasteroid) stages: 58–90 (67) Μm; oxyasters with microspined rays: 15–30 (20) Μm; microspined strongylasters: 5–8 (6) Μm.
Ecology. A shallow-water species found in reef habitats, oftentimes obscured by epizoans; also in caves, to 25 m. One study reports it from 100 m depth off Barbados (van Soest and Stentoft, 1988).
Distribution. Tropical West Africa, Bermuda, South Carolina, Florida, Bahamas, the entire Caribbean region, Guiana, and Brazil.
Comments. As already reported by Pulitzer-Finali (1986) from specimens in shallow coastal habitats in Puerto Rico and by Cárdenas et al. (2009) who redescribed the type specimen, our material too has cortical oxeas with one rounded end (strongyloxeas), a feature not mentioned by other authors describing Caribbean G. gibberosa. We examined this characteristic in other museum specimens, from Bermuda, off Georgia, Florida (Gulf of Mexico), Bahamas, Virgin Islands, and Belize and found that all had more or less modified strongloxeas. None, however, had distinct cortical styles, as described and illustrated for G. corticostylifera Hajdu et al. (1992) from Brazil.
description: Published as part of Rützler, Klaus, Piantoni, Carla, Van, Rob W. M. & Díaz, Cristina, 2014, Diversity of sponges (Porifera) from cryptic habitats on the Belize barrier reef near Carrie Bow Cay, pp. 1-129 in Zootaxa 3805 (1) on page 25, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3805.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/249983