Chondrocladia Thomson, 1873

Ekins, Merrick, Erpenbeck, Dirk & Hooper, John N. A., 2020, Carnivorous sponges from the Australian Bathyal and Abyssal zones collected during the RV Investigator 2017 Expedition, Zootaxa 4774 (1), pp. 1-159 : 88

Subgenus Chondrocladia Thomson, 1873

Diagnosis: Chondrocladia without a layer of special spicules (subtrochirhabds or trochirhabds), lacking special rostriform (snoutlike) subtylostyles in filaments or terminal balls, and without planar vanes formed of evenly spaced upright branches (from Lee et al. 2012).

Type species: Chondrocladia virgata Thomson, 1873 (by monotypy).

Remarks. The genus Chondrocladia has been recently summarised ( Lopes et al. 2011), with these data updated to include additional information, and more recently described species, in Table 10 . There are currently 31 species of Chondrocladia (Chondrocladia) , 6 species of Ch. (Meliiderma) Ridley & Dendy, 1887 and 1 species of Ch. ( Symmetrocladia ) Lee, Reiswig, Austin & Lundsten, 2012 ( Van Soest et al. 2019).