Ulosa de Laubenfels, 1936

Van Soest, Rob W. M., Beglinger, Elly J. & de Voogd, Nicole J., 2012, Sponges of the family Esperiopsidae (Demospongiae, Poecilosclerida) from Northwest Africa, with the descriptions of four new species, European Journal of Taxonomy 18, pp. 1-21 : 14

Genus Ulosa de Laubenfels, 1936

Remarks

The genus Ulosa is not well-established, with approximately 15 disjunctly occurring species (South Australia, North East Atlantic and Mediterranean, Indonesia, Central Pacific, and Brazil, see Van Soest et al. 2012). About half the number of species are only known from old dried types and/or are inadequately characterized. With the simple morphological features the genus remains to be established as a monophyletic group, and indeed as a member of the suborder Poecilosclerida , as the implied assumption of secondarily lost chelae lacks firm evidence. In fact, a recent study of 28S gene sequences of a large group of demosponges including poecilosclerid, hadromerid and halichondrid sponges ( Morrow et al. 2012) indicated that at least one species of the genus Ulosa could be a member of the family Halichondriidae Gray, 1867 . Here we will retain the genus as a member of Esperiopsidae until sequences of the type species of Ulosa will be obtained.