Coscinoderma sporadense Voultsiadou-Koukoura, Van Soest and Koukouras, 1991 Fig. 24

Coscinoderma sporadense Voultsiadou-Koukoura, Van Soest and Koukouras, 1991: 195.

Description.

Growth form massive, cushion shaped, lobose (6 to 30 cm2 surface area, ca. 5 mm avg thickness). Colour light brown, lighter in formalin. Consistency soft, spongy and compressible. Surface conulose with conules ca. 1 mm in height and 2-4 mm apart. Oscules few (2-4 mm in diameter). Ostia visible in some areas with a diameter of 50-200 µm . Ectosome (100-350 µm in thickness) detachable and armoured with sand grains and foreign spicules.

Ascending primary fibres (50-80 µm in diameter) cored with foreign material to such a degree that sometimes spongin is hardly visible. Foreign material usually sand grains mixed with low amounts of spicules, although some fibres cored exclusively with spicules. Primary fibres connected to a dense, irregular, network of secondary fibres which, in the vicinity of the primary fibres, has the form of a perforated plate. Secondary fibres (10-40 µm in diameter) often with rounded or broadly acute free tips, thin and hardly anastomosing. The secondary network, in its greater part, resembles an unwound clew.

Habitat.

Cave, rocky bottom. Bathymetric range 3-15 m.

Mediterranean Caves.

Youra Cave (Sporades Islands, Northern Aegean Sea) (Voultsiadou-Koukoura et al. 1991; Pronzato and Manconi 2011).