Mycale (Carmia) madraspatana Annandale, 1914

Van, Rob W. M., Aryasari, Ratih & De, Nicole J., 2021, Mycale species of the tropical Indo-West Pacific (Porifera, Demospongiae, Poecilosclerida), Zootaxa 4912 (1), pp. 1-212 : 83

Mycale (Carmia) madraspatana Annandale, 1914

Mycale madraspatana Annandale, 1914: 154 , pl. X fig. 3, pl. XI fig. 4; Burton 1937: 24, pl. II fig. 12; Ali 1956: 295; Pattanayak 2009: 25.

? Mycale macilenta ; Li 1986: 86 (Chinese), 110 (English), pl. I fig. 3, text-fig. 9 (not: Bowerbank 1866).

Summary description. Brick-red crusts on Mytilus mussels. The skeleton is confusingly described, but apparently there is not a clear ectosomal aegogropila-like tangential skeleton. Annandale’s description provided the following spicule data: mycalostyles 265–279 µm, anisochelae I (in rosettes) 43–52 µm, sigma I rare, size not given, toxas quite variable in length 140–352 µm. Burton’s (1937) description does not provide clarity over the presence or absence of an ectosomal skeleton. For the spicules he gives: mycalostyles 280 x 5 µm, anisochelae I 48 µm, anisochelae II 20 µm, sigma I 80 µm, toxas 140–350 µm.

Distribution. Madras (= Chennai) Harbor, depth 1–2 m; possibly South China.

Comments. For the time being we maintain this species as separate, but its published descriptions make it very similar to Mycale (Carmia) suezza ( Row, 1911) , cf. below. There is only a single, possibly not important, difference with Mycale (Carmia) militaris Annandale, 1924 (see below), viz. the anisochelae of that species apparently do not form rosettes. Li’s (1986) description of the NE Atlantic species M. macilenta from South China keys out as possibly belonging to this species, but he also reports small sigmas of 26–30 µm.

Outside our target region, New Zealand Mycale (Carmia) tasmani Bergquist & Fromont, 1988 has similarities with M. (C.) madraspatana and M. (C.) suezza ( Row, 1911) (cf. below) in the spicule complement, the three allegedly having differences in the size categories of the anisochelae. M. (C.) tasmani has three categories, confirmed by us from a spicule suspension of the holotype (?, labeled as NNMZ 167) donated to the ZMA collection by Eduardo Hajdu. M. (C.) suezza has two anisochelae categories and M. (C.) madraspatana has probably at least two as well according to Burton (1937), although Annandale mentions only a single category. These three species should be compared carefully in order two clarify their status as separate species.