Cyclacanthia Samaai, & Kelly, 2004

Samaai, Toufiek, Kelly, Michelle, Ngwakum, Benedicta, Payne, Robyn, Teske, Peter R., Janson, Liesl, Kerwath, Sven, Parker, Denham & Gibbons, Mark J., 2020, New Latrunculiidae (Demospongiae, Poecilosclerida) from the Agulhas ecoregion of temperate southern Africa, Zootaxa 4896 (3), pp. 409-442 : 433

Genus Cyclacanthia Samaai, & Kelly, 2004

Type species. Cyclacanthia bellae ( Samaai, Gibbons, Kelly and Davies-Coleman, 2003) : 14-15, figs. 3C, 4D, 5D.

Diagnosis. Encrusting sponges with long cylindrical to tapering volcano-shaped oscular fistules and truncate areolate porefields, surface even, non-hispid but felt-like to the touch, texture in life soft, compressible, only slightly compressible in preservative. Colour in life emerald green to olive green, and in preservative dark green to dark brownish green. Choanosomal architecture consists of broad swathes or defined tracts of megascleres (styles) that diverge and radiate from the base of the sponge towards the upper choanosome, where they form loose brushes and the typical wispy reticulation of other Latrunculiidae , with megascleres scattered interstitially; ectosome composed of a dense tangential layer of megascleres with an irregular palisade of microscleres at the surface that are oriented in many directions. Microscleres are acanthose isospinodiscorhabds with a straight stout shaft bearing identical apical whorl and basal manubrium with a reduced numbers of discrete conical spines that may be unevenly distributed around the shaft, i.e. grouped in bunches. The median whorl is equidistant from the apical whorl and manubrium and bears several discrete conical spines; all spines are secondarily spinose. A single spike protrudes from the manubrium and apical whorls in the plane of the shaft. Larger isospinodiscorhabds bearing two whorls of pointed spines on a thick shaft with both ends pointed and scattered in the choanosomal skeleton. Microscleres are disposed in a palisade with their basal whorls buried in the outer ectosome (modified from Samaai et al. 2004).