Spongionella Bowerbank, 1862

Ott, B., Mcdaniel, N. & Humphrey, E., 2024, Fourteen new species of demosponges (Porifera) from three coastal fjords in southern British Columbia, Canada, Zootaxa 5463 (2), pp. 151-200 : 187

Genus Spongionella Bowerbank, 1862

Dictyodendrillidae are defined as Dendroceratida with reticulate skeleton and laminated pithed fibres ( Bergquist 1980). Spongionella is defined as (Bergquist and Cook 2002 [2004]) Dictyodendrillidae with a compact reticular skeleton of uncored primary and secondary fibres with concentric lamination and a variable pith component and almost perfectly rectangular in the type species. The surface is microconulose from projection of tapered primary fibres. Our species fits this definition although the fibre reticulation is less regular than Sowerby’s (1804) holotype which is the type species for the genus. Worldwide there are 12 recognized species (de Voogd, et al. 2023) reported for the Northeast Atlantic, Northwest and Southeast Pacific, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean and Caribbean, ranging discontinuously from littoral to at least 98 m; a number of records provide no depth information.