Two new shallow-water species ofHaliclonafrom north-eastern Brazil (Demospongiae: Haplosclerida: Chalinidae)

Abstract

Haliclonais an unusually species-rich genus in Porifera, with more than 400 species described. In spite of many subgenera used in the taxonomic housekeeping of these sponges, over half of them remain unassigned to a subgenus, thus encouraging a wide range of redescriptions and taxonomic revisions of materials from all around the world. In this paper, we describe two newHaliclonaspp. collected at Pernambuco, Alagoas and Bahia States (north-eastern Brazil, between 08°46′S and 13°56′S).Haliclona(Reniera)chlorillasp. nov. is a dark green or black coloured, delicately-branched species; andHaliclona(Soestella)peixinhoaesp. nov., a beige-coloured, tubular species, where tubes frequently bear large thorns and possess a conspicuous sub-superficial meandering reticulation. These species highlight the importance of includingex-situcollections in compiling baseline data, as both were already present in scientific collections by the 1980s and 1990s.

Two new species of Haliclona Grant, 1836 (Haplosclerida: Chalinidae) from Sergipe State, Brazil

“…Furthermore, the two new species here described are also an addition to the known biodiversity of Chalinidae on the Brazilian coast. Now, there are thirteen species of Haliclona registered for the Brazilian coast (Bispo et al, 2014; this study). For a detailed overview of the previous records of Haliclona from Brazil, see Bispo et al (2014).…”

“…Despite this high species richness, only 11 species of Haliclona are registered from the Brazilian coast. Six of them are provisional endemic, while the five other co-occur in the Caribbean (Hajdu et al, 2011;Muricy et al, 2011;Bispo et al, 2014).…”

Two new species of Haliclona (Demospongiae: Haplosclerida: Chalinidae) from north-eastern Brazilian coastal waters and oceanic islands

“…The knowledge on Haliclona spp. along the Brazilian coast remains deficient, with 15 species recorded, nine of them from coastal waters of north-eastern Brazil, but none from Fernando de Noronha Archipelago or Rocas Atoll (Muricy et al, 2011(Muricy et al, , 2015Sandes et al, 2014;Bispo et al, 2016). However, the record of an undescribed species of Haliclona from Rocas Atoll (Moraes et al, 2003(Moraes et al, , 2006Moraes, 2011) and the number of new species of Haliclona recently described from Brazil (five spp.)…”

First records of the order Polycladida (Platyhelminthes, Rhabditophora) from reef ecosystems of Alagoas State, north-eastern Brazil, with the description ofThysanozoon alagoensissp. nov.

“…On the north-eastern Brazilian coast, such as in the state of Alagoas, reef ecosystems are abundant and have a rich biological diversity (Correia & Sovierzoski, 2009). These reefs include a benthic fauna, which provide various natural substrates for the Polycladida, composed mainly of sponges (Cedro et al ., 2007, 2011, 2013; Bispo et al ., 2014), corals (Correia, 2011) and bryozoans (Vieira et al ., 2007, 2008, 2010). A variety of algae also provides habitats for numerous associated organisms (Santos & Correia, 1994, 1995, 2001), which are important environments for flatworms and other small invertebrates such as opisthobranch molluscs (Padula et al , 2012) and echinoderm brittle stars (Lima et al , 2011, 2013).…”