Latrunculia sceptrellifera ( Carter, 1887 )

Kelly, Michelle, Sim-Smith, Carina, Stone, Robert, Reiswig, Toufiek Samaai Henry & Austin, William, 2016, New taxa and arrangements within the family Latrunculiidae (Demospongiae, Poecilosclerida), Zootaxa 4121 (1), pp. 1-48 : 44

Latrunculia sceptrellifera ( Carter, 1887)

Latrunculia sceptrellifera ( Carter, 1887) was first described as a species of Cliona and the description was made from “little sceptrellas like those of Alectona wallichii ( Carter, 1874) ” in a mixture of microscleres and other spicules in a residue boiled from excavations in a portion of coral. Carter (1887) states that, “All these species have become so mixed up together by the invasion of a small annelid (deleted) that it is impossible, where the species are not previously known, to distinguish the spiculations with certainty in this mounted ‘residue’, where they are, of course, all mixed together; hence the notes of interrogation after (deleted) C. sceptrellifera , the characters of whose spiculations, although regarded as of a new species, are also conjectured”. Unfortunately, Carter (1887) did not illustrate the spicules in question. The “little sceptrellas of Alectona wallichii ”, to which the spicules in question were compared ( Carter 1874, Pl., 15, Fig. 46), bear no resemblance to the typical anisodiscorhabds of Latrunculiidae . While we have not had the opportunity to examine the relevant microscope slide material, we consider the species to be unrecognisable at best, and further study is required to confirm the placement in Latrunculia . We have transferred this species to Latrunculia incertae sedis as well ( Table 9 ).