Excavating sponges from the Pacific of Central America, descriptions and a faunistic record

Abstract

Excavating sponges are one of the main groups of bioeroders in coral reefs. Their diversity has been thoroughly studied in some regions: in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and the Indo-Pacific, including the Mexican Pacific. However, there is a lack of information from the Pacific of Central America, with only a few records from Panama and Costa Rica. This study provides additional distributional records and taxonomic descriptions of species collected between 2011 and 2016 at nine localities along the Pacific coast of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. A total of fourteen species of excavating sponges from three orders, three families, and five genera are considered valid in this area. Nine are new records for Central America, six are new records for El Salvador, three are new records for Nicaragua and eleven are new records for Costa Rica. The species collected from Panama were already recorded before. The species here described are Cliona amplicavata, Cliona californiana, Cliona euryphylle, Cliona microstrongylata, Cliona aff. mucronata, Cliona pocillopora, Cliona tropicalis, Cliona vermifera, Cliothosa tylostrongylata, Pione cf. carpenteri, Pione mazatlanensis, Thoosa calpulli, Thoosa mismalolli and Siphonodictyon crypticum. We also reviewed the literature related to excavating sponges from Central America, and the taxonomic status of respective species was updated. We provide a faunistic record of 14 excavating sponge species for Central America. Our data are expected to be useful for management and conservation purposes.

Infestación de Nodipecten subnodosus (Mollusca: Bivalvia) por la esponja perforadora Cliona californiana en la laguna Ojo de Liebre, noroeste de México

“…La identificación de la esponja fue realizada con el apoyo de la literatura especializada (fig. 2a, b; Carballo et al, 2004;Laubenfels, 1932;Pacheco et al, 2018). La longitud del largo de las almejas fue medida con un vernier (± 0.1 cm) y fue determinada como la distancia entre el extremo anterior y posterior de las valvas de cada almeja (Osuna-García, 2004).…”

New records of Demospongiae (Porifera) from Reserva Marina El Pelado (Santa Elena, Ecuador), with description of Tedania (Tedania) ecuadoriensis sp. nov.

“…Our preliminary results are inconclusive with regard to the identification of this Ecuadorian Cliona material, as no DNA sequence has been published for C. eu-ryphylle, let alone for an Atlantic record of the species. It is also possible that the Ecuadorian species might belong to a distinct species, rather than suppose its crossing of the isthmus through the Panama Canal, as explicitly suggested by Pacheco et al (2018). Previous records of C. euryphylle need to be revised in an integrative approach with more extensive sampling and molecular analyses with higher resolution capabilities.…”

“…However, a series of records exists that have been considered indicative of the species' transisthmian distribution (Carballo et al 2004;Vega 2012;Pacheco et al 2018). These report on sponges bearing tylostyles up to 368 µm long, and 11 µm thick (Carballo et al 2004;Vega 2012) respectively, but also, in the case of Pacific Costa Rican specimens, only up to 300 × 8 µm (Pacheco et al 2018), which considerably approach values originally reported by Topsent. On the other hand, spirasters appear to fall short from those of Topsent, up to nearly 50% longer.…”

“…However, these species have unusual aspects of their spirasters, both in dimensions as well as outline, which suggest closer proximity between the Ecuadorian species and C. euryphylle. Cliona aethiopicus was considered closely allied to C. chilensis by Burton (1932), Bergquist (1968) 290-392 (344) × 9.5-17.5 (12.5) 7-28 (24) × 0.9-9.2 (6.3) New Zealand / 25 m sensu Carballo et al (2004) 180-367.5 (277) × 2.5-10 (5.5) 10-30 (18.1) Mexican Pacific / 4-20 m sensu Vega (2012) 111-365 × 1.3-11 30-6 Mexican Pacific / 0-3 m sensu Pacheco et al (2018) 120-300 (201) × 5-8 (6.7) 9-24 (18) × 2-7 (4.7) Costa Rica Pacific / 4-20 m C. aethiopicus (Burton, 1932) irrespective of Thiele's (1905) hesitation regarding the origin of a few spirasters found in the encrusting Chilean specimen he studied. The presence of these spirasters in the type material of C. chilensis was not confirmed by Desqueyroux-Faúndez and van Soest (1997), which establishes both species' spicule sets as markedly divergent.…”

“…Sponges represent a key component of marine ecosystems and exhibit high diversity and abundance in some oceans, including tropical, temperate and polar regions (Bell and Barnes 2003;Bell and Smith 2004;Carballo et al 2008;Hajdu et al 2013;Hajdu et al 2015;Pacheco et al 2018). Due to the broad substrate cover and filtration capacity of sponges, marine ecosystems in general will likely be affected by changes in the geographic distribution of these organisms (Bell and Smith 2004;Bell 2007;Carballo et al 2008;Cruz-Barraza and Carballo 2008).…”