Lycopodina Lundbeck, 1905

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 : 123

Genus Lycopodina Lundbeck, 1905

Asbestopluma (Lycopodina) Lundbeck, 1905: 58 .

Lycopodina Lundbeck, 1905: 58 .

Cotylina Lundbeck, 1905: 68 ; de Laubenfels 1936: 122.

Diagnosis. Cladorhizidae pedunculate with body either in the form of an erect stem or sphere with filaments in all directions, or cup shaped. Megascleres are mycalostyles and commonly shorter (tylo)styles. Microscleres are one type of arcuate or palmate anisochelae in which the smaller end is in the shape of a central plate and two rudimentary, flat, lateral teeth, all with serrated edges towards the middle. To this, forceps spicules are often added, but may be rare or absent in particular species or specimens of a single species. Never sigmas or sigmancistras (from Hestetun et al. 2016b).

Type species: Esperella cupressiformis var. lycopodium Levinsen, 1887 , accepted as

Lycopodina lycopodium ( Levinsen, 1887) (by subsequent designation, de Laubenfels 1936).

Remarks.

From the currently known 30 species of Lycopodina , 14 species possess forceps spicules and 16 species lack them. Those species possessing forceps spicules are: L. cupressiformis ( Carter, 1874) , L. drakensis Goodwin et al., 2017 , L. gracilis ( Koltun, 1955) , L. hadalis ( Lévi, 1964) , L. hypogea ( Vacelet & Boury-Esnault, 1996) , L. infundibulum ( Levinsen, 1887) , L. lycopodium ( Levinsen, 1887) , L. novangliae Hestetun et al., 2017b , L. occidentalis ( Lambe, 1893) , L. robusta ( Levinsen, 1887) , L. ruijsi Van Soest, 2016 , L. tendali Hestetun et al., 2017b , L. vaceleti ( van Soest & Baker, 2011) , and L. versatilis ( Topsent, 1890) . Those species lacking forceps spicules are: L. bilamellata ( Lévi, 1993) , L. callithrix ( Hentschel, 1914) , L. calyx ( Hentschel, 1914) , L. comata ( Lundbeck, 1905) , L. communis ( Lopes & Hajdu, 2014) , L. ecoprof ( Lopes & Hajdu, 2014) , L. globularis ( Lévi, 1964) , L. hydra ( Lundbeck, 1905) , L. lebedi ( Koltun, 1962) , L. microstrongyla ( Lopes et al., 2011) , L. minuta ( Lambe, 1900) , L. parvula ( Hestetun et al., 2015) , L. pediculifera Dressler-Allame et al., 2017 , L. rastrichela ( Hestetun et al., 2015) , L. rhabdostylophora Dressler-Allame et al., 2017 and L. subtilis ( Hestetun et al., 2019) . All five species of Lycopodina described in this present study lack forceps spicules.

The morphological descriptions of the new species have been compared with all other species of Lycopodina in Table 14 .