Petrosaspongia pharmamari n. sp.

Material examined: 1 Specimen, 15 m depth, rocky bottom, El Hierro, Canary Islands. Holotype Nº CEAB.POR. BIO –190, Centre for Advanced Studies of Blanes, CSIC, Spain.

Etymology: The species is dedicated to Pharmamar Company, for leading investigations in the field of new anti­cancer drugs from marine organisms and, particularly, from sponges.

Type locality: El Hierro (Canary Islands, North Atlantic) sublittoral.

Description

External features

Massive, lobulose specimen 6 cm high, 8 cm wide. Consistency very hard, almost incompressible. Ectosome detachable from the choanosome in shreds. Choanosome dense. Surface even, microconulose, unarmoured except at the conules, where the end of the primary fibres arises (Fig. 2 A). Oscules inconspicuous. Colour dark brown outside, beige inside.

Skeleton

Densely reticulate. Formed by irregular meshes of 35–660 m in diameter.

Primary fibres: Irregular in thickness (532–975 m), cored with abundant foreign debris (Fig. 2 B).

Secondary fibres: Free of foreign debris (45–115 m in diameter) (Fig. 3 B), strongly laminated (Fig. 2 C & 3D). Through SEM, the surface of the secondary fibres appears rippled in a longitudinal direction (Figs. 2 C & D). They form fenestrate plates at the zones where they join the primary fibres (Fig. 4 A).

Considerable amounts of sand granules and other foreign materials are scattered throughout the choanosome (Fig. 4 B).

Tertiary network made of very thin fibres (8–10 m in diameter) is visible only in some places, as in the type species of Petrosaspongia (Fig. 4 C).

Distribution: Canary Islands, El Hierro (North Atlantic), rocky sublittoral, 15 m depth.