Erylus Gray, 1867

Van, Rob W. M., 2017, Sponges of the Guyana Shelf, Zootaxa 1, pp. 1-225 : 84

Genus Erylus Gray, 1867

Remarks. The genus Erylus has expanded rather spectacularly in the West Atlantic in the past 20 years since successive Brazilian research groups published reports on samples obtained during various projects along the northeast and southeast coasts of Brazil . No less than 10 species are now known from Brazil (Muricy et al. 2011). The neighboring Greater Caribbean also has a considerable number, eight species, two of which are shared with Brazilian waters. Thus, a total of 16 species are known from the Western Atlantic. The taxonomy of Erylus in this region is held hostage by the uncertainty of the precise properties of the two eldest, but insufficiently described, species, viz. Stellettinopsis euastrum Schmidt, 1880 and Stelletta transiens Weltner, 1882 . Several subsequently described Erylus species, E. alleni De Laubenfels, 1934 , E. corneus Boury-Esnault, 1973 , E. diminutus Mothes, Lerner & Silva, 1999 , and E. goffrilleri Wiedenmayer, 1977 may turn out to be a junior synonym of one of these two names. In the continued absence of proper re-descriptions, that also applies to the three species described here from the Guyana shelf .

Erylus euastrum ( Schmidt, 1880) (as Stellettinopsis ) is a junior secondary homonym of the Mediterranean Erylus euastrum ( Schmidt, 1868) (as Stelletta ), which further complicates the taxonomy of Central West Atlantic Erylus .