Leucettidae De Laubenfels, 1936

Family Leucettidae De Laubenfels, 1936 View in CoL

Genus Leucetta Haeckel, 1872 View in CoL

Remarks. The present collections contained two distinct species, (1) yellow or bright yellow, globular or with rounded lobes, with large oscules often provided with a thin low rim, and (2) pink, massive with one or more, frequently several, tubiform, smooth or grooved, elevations. Both species have a predominance of triactine spicules in two distinct size categories, and rare small tetractine spicules. The spiculation of the two differs mostly in the length and thickness of the large (’giant’) triactines, with the yellow lobes having the dimensions approximately 300–700 x 20–40 µm, and the pink tubes having these giant triactines with actine size 1000–1800 x 80–250 µm.

It is customary in the scientific literature to use the name Leucetta chagosensis Dendy, 1913 for the yellow species (see e.g. Wörheide & Hooper 1999), but the pink species is only recently again named Leucetta microraphis Haeckel, 1872 , originally as L. primigenia var. microrhaphis ), after periods in which the name L. primigenia Haeckel, 1872 was used. These assignments are debatable and await proper revision of type material, but for the time being we keep here the customary names. The status of L. chagosensis is also discussed above under Ascoleucetta sagittata .