Sycon oscari, Van & De, 2018

Van, Rob W. M. & De, Nicole J., 2018, Calcareous sponges of the Western Indian Ocean and Red Sea, Zootaxa 4426 (1), pp. 1-160 : 150

Sycandra tabulata Schuffner, 1877

Schuffner (1877: 422, pl. 25 fig. 11) described this Sycon species from Mauritius, comparing it with Sycon elegans (Bowerbank, 1845) . Its skeleton is distinct only by the thick bushes of thin fusiforms diactines (140 x 4 µm) in the distal cones of the radial tubes. Borojević (1967) in turn compared his record of Sycon elegans from South Africa with Schuffner’s species. Since S. elegans is a Northeast Atlantic species, this may be interpreted as a suggestion that the South African record may indeed be better assigned to Sycon tabulatum . Schuffner’s combination is preoccupied: it is a junior primary homonym of Sycandra tabulata Haeckel, 1872 . Dendy & Row (1913) noticed this already, but assumed both homonyms belonged to Sycon elegans . In view of the fact that Bowerbank's and Haeckel's specimens were from the Mediterranean, while Schuffner's was from Mauritius this synonymy is judged to be unlikely. We propose here to rename Schuffner’s species as Sycon oscari nom.nov. The name is given to honor Oscar Schuffner, the author of its original name.