Latrunculia (Uniannulata) oparinae, Kelly, Michelle, Sim-Smith, Carina, Stone, Robert, Reiswig, Toufiek Samaai Henry & Austin, William, 2016

Neopodospongia carlinae (Boury-Esnault & van Beveren, 1982) View in CoL

During the process of establishing L. ( Uniannulata) subgen. nov., Latrunculia carlinae Boury-Esnault & van Beveren, 1982 was re-examined because the microscleres appeared to be reminiscent of those in L. ( U.) oparinae subgen. nov., and the New Zealand fossil species L. ( U.) paeonia subgen. et sp. nov., in particular. The species was first described as a species of Latrunculia by Boury-Esnault & Bevern (1982) despite the authors noting that the specimen had many non-latrunculid characters, and that the thistle-shaped ‘anisodiscorhabds’ were quite different from any other Latrunculia microscleres described thus far ( Fig. 13 View FIGURE 13 A). In 2006, the species was transferred to Sigmosceptrella in the poecilosclerid family Podospongiidae , by Samaai et al. (2006), but they ceded that it was perhaps still not quite the right place. By 2011, Sim-Smith & Kelly (2011) had described a range of new genera within Podospongiidae , to which the species carlinae seems to have greater affinity. After careful reexamination of the holotype ( Fig. 15 View FIGURE 15 ) we now consider L. carlinae to be better placed in podospongid genus Neopodospongia Sim-Smith & Kelly, 2011 , established for thin encrusting species with very similar characteristics. In particular, the aciculospinorhabd microscleres are in two size categories and protorhabd appears to be sigmoid, as in all Podospongiidae ( Sim-Smith & Kelly 2011) .

Latrunculia carlinae has microscleres with ragged apical spines ( Fig. 15 View FIGURE 15 C–G) and are in two distinct morphological and size categories ( Fig. 15 View FIGURE 15 C–E); the smaller microsclere is narrower, about 10 µm shorter, with a smaller apex. Although we did not find any specifically sigmoid protorhabds, we observed many protorhabds with the uneven lateral development ( Fig. 15 View FIGURE 15 H) associated with the fusion of recurved sigmoid spines, as illustrated in Sim-Smith & Kelly (2011: Fig. 4 View FIGURE 4 E, R). Neopodospongia carlinae from subantarctic waters is the sixth in this widely-spread genus, which has three species in New Zealand, one species in the Chilean fiords, and one species in the North Atlantic ( Table 9 View TABLE 9 ).