Latrunculiidae Topsent 1922

Family Latrunculiidae Topsent, 1922

Diagnosis. Massive encrusting, semispherical or pedunculate sponges with areolate porefields and raised fistular oscules; texture in life soft, slightly elastic, cakey, compressed and leathery in preservative. Colour in life typically liquorice brown, dark green, olive, brown or khaki, often tinged with forest­green or blue, or rarely pale beige to white. Structural megascleres are styles or anisostrongyles, rarely oxeas, these are frequently slightly irregular, sinuous, forming a compact tangential layer under the ectosome, and a widemeshed reticulation in the choanosome. Microscleres are acanthodiscorhabds, or traditionally “chessman” spicules, bearing apical and basal whorls of spines (apical whorl and manubrium) and several crenulate discs (subsidiary and median whorls) in between, typically arranged in a compact palisade of perpendicular spicules, their bases buried in the ectosomal membrane. Viviparous. Shallow sublittoral to bathybenthic, polar to warm temperate (modified from Samaai and Kelly, 2002).