Chondrocladia

Chondrocladia
Temporal range: Pleistocene(?) to Present day
The ping-pong tree sponge, Chondrocladia lampadiglobus [1][2]
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Porifera
Class: Demospongiae
Order: Poecilosclerida
Family: Cladorhizidae
Genus: Chondrocladia
Thomson, 1873
Species

33; see text

Synonyms
  • Crinorhiza Schmidt, 1880
  • Meliiderma Ridley & Dendy, 1887

Chondrocladia is a genus of carnivorous demosponges of the family Cladorhizidae.[3] Neocladia was long considered a junior synonym, but recently become accepted as a distinct genus.[4]

33 named species are placed in this genus at present, but at least two additional undescribed ones are known to exist, while some of the described ones are known only from a few specimens or (e.g. the enigmatic Chondrocladia occulta) just a single one, and their validity and/or placement in Chondrocladia is doubtful. Chondrocladia sponges are stipitate, with a stalk frequently anchored in the substrate by rhizoids and an egg-shaped body, sometimes with branches that end in inflatable spheres.[5][6]

Fossils assignable to this genus are known since the Pleistocene,[7] less than 2 million years ago. But given its deep sea habitat, Chondrocladia may well have been around for much longer – perhaps since the Mesozoic, as characteristic spicules (termed "microcricorhabds" or "trochirhabds"), almost identical to those of some living Chondrocladia, are known from Early Jurassic rocks almost 200 million years old.[6]

  1. ^ * Vacelet, J. (2006). New carnivorous sponges (Porifera, Poecilosclerida) collected from crewed submersibles in the deep Pacific. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 148: 553–584. Figure 17. doi:10.1111/j.1096-3642.2006.00234.x
  2. ^ Van Soest, R. W. M., Boury-Esnault, N., Vacelet, J., Dohrmann, M., Erpenbeck, D., De Voogd, N. J., Santodomingo, N., Vanhoorne, B., Kelly, M., Hooper, J. N. A. (2011). Global Diversity of Sponges (Porifera). PLoS ONE 7(4): e35105. Figure 3. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0035105
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference worms was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference vacelet-2008 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference cristobo-urgorri-rios-2005 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference vacelet-kelly-2008 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference sepkoski-2002 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).