Spongilla crateriformis var. insularis Annandale, 1911

Van Soest, Rob W. M., 2024, Correcting sponge names: nomenclatural update of lower taxa level Porifera, Zootaxa 5398 (1), pp. 1-122 : 48

Spongilla crateriformis var. insularis Annandale, 1911

Spongilla crateriformis var. insularis Penney & Racek, 1968: 6 (with question mark, no illustration).

Radiospongilla crateriformis ; Khera & Chaturvedi 1976: 14 (listed as synonym).

The variety appears to be a nomen nudum because Penney & Racek (1968) cite a name assigned to Annandale (1911a: 85, footnote), which cannot be found in this paper and in the footnote. Annandale does discuss a Spongilla crateriformis found on Ross Island, in the Andaman Islands, India (approximate coordinates 11.6°N 92.7°E), by an assistant of the Indian Museum Mr C.A. Paiva, but he did not give the specimen an infraspecific or subspecific name. Penney & Racek apparently were of the opinion that this occurrence merited a varietal name, and gave it the name var. insularis , assigning authorship erroneously to Annandale. They created a nomen nudum, as no description was given. The combination is listed as a junior synonym of Radiospongilla crateriformis ( Potts, 1882: 12 as Meyenia ) in a checklist of Indian freshwater sponges in the collections of the Zoological Survey of India, ZSI (Khera & Chaturved 1976), but it is not mentioned in Soota (1991). Since the type locality of Radiospongilla crateriformis is in Eastern North America, it is quite likely that the Andaman Island occurrence of a population of this species could belong to a distinct (sub)specific taxon. Possibly, the Indian records of R. crateriformis all conform to this subspecies. However, I refrain to nomenclaturally formalize the existence of this subspecies because details of the type specimen and where it is deposited and registered are currently unknown. The type material could be in ZSI, Kalkota, but we must await its description (ICZN art. 16).