Catalogue of Brazilian Porifera - Porifera Brasil - UFRJ

I. Introductory Section1. IntroductionThe phylum Porifera includes approximately 8350valid species known worldwide (van Soest et al., 2011).Of these, 443 species have been identified in Brazil.Brazilian sponges thus comprise approximately 5.3%of the diversity of Porifera, but they still are in a poorstate of knowledge. Besides outdated surveys such asthose of Mello-Leitão (1961), who listed all spongegroups, and Hechtel (1976), who listed exclusively themarine Demospongiae, there are few recent but partialcompilations, such as those of Moraes et al. (2006) forspecies of oceanic islands, Azevedo & Klautau (2007)for calcareous sponges, and Hajdu & Lopes (2007)for deep-water species. In the last 30 years many newrecords and new species have been described fromBrazil, and there have been important changes in thecomposition of supra-generic groups. Synonyms areabundant and often hidden within the systematicliterature; their misinterpretation is a major source ofconfusion in the systematics of Brazilian sponges. Inthis catalogue the existing and proposed synonyms aredetailed and a list of names once reported from Brazilbut currently not considered valid is presented. Thisshould help the reader to find out what happened toold names that “disappear” from the recent literatureand to avoid repetition of the same species underdifferent names in checklists or other studies.The main goals of this catalogue are to tabulateall the literature of the Phylum Porifera of Brazil upto year 2010 and to generate a thorough annotatedclassification of Brazilian sponges with their currentlyaccepted names and distributions. It provides a guideto the specialized literature and synonyms. Eventualmistakes in the literature (species and localities names,coordinates, depth, systematic misinterpretations,etc.) were corrected. Our results show the specieswith taxonomic problems that should be revised, aswell as the areas underexplored. This catalogue willbe also useful as a basis for diversity estimation andbiogeographic studies.All taxons are arranged in alphabetical order.Taxon diagnoses are not given; the reader can findthem in the Systema Porifera (Hooper & van Soest,2002a) or in more recent revisions. Species identifiedonly to supraspecific levels or as “sp.”, “aff.”, or “cf.” weretabulated in a separate list, by alphabetical order andwith less information than the main list. Additionally,we provide a list of species by locality and a list ofnomenclatorial acts here proposed.2. Taxonomical history of theBrazilian spongesThe date of the first study on Brazilian sponges isuncertain. In 1766, Pallas described Spongia cavernosa(now Hyattella cavernosa), Spongia fulva (now Aplysinafulva) and Spongia fistularis (now Aplysina fistularis)from “Mare Americanum” (American Sea). This isusually interpreted as corresponding to the TropicalWestern Atlantic, but the country and locality areunknown. Pinheiro et al. (2007) designated a neotypefor Aplysina fulva from SE Brazil and for Aplysinafistularis from Puerto Rico. Here we follow Pinheiroet al. (2007) and assumed that the collection site ofSpongia fulva could have been in Brazil. Later on,Lamarck (1814) described Spongia carbonaria (nowNeopetrosia carbonaria), also from “Mare Americanum”,maintaining the uncertainty on the beginning of thestudy of sponges of Brazil.Only in 1863, in his monograph of freshwatersponges, Bowerbank described seven speciesunequivocally collected in Brazil, all from the Amazonregion. Seven other studies with one or a few speciesfrom Brazil were published from 1860-1880 (e. g.,Schultze, 1865; Müller, 1865; Hyatt, 1877; Selenka,1879). The first major input of knowledge on Braziliansponges came in the 1880’s, with the results of theH.M.S. Challenger expedition (Poléjaeff, 1883, 1884;Schulze, 1885, 1887a; Ridley & Dendy, 1886, 1887;Sollas, 1886a, 1888). These reports added 40 species tothe list of known sponges in Brazil.From 1890 to 1960 relatively few studies werepublished by different authors (average 2.6 articles perdecade), mostly on freshwater sponges (e.g., Cordero,1923, 1924, 1928; Arndt, 1930; Carvalho, 1942;Machado, 1947a,b) but also reporting a few marinesponges (e.g., Carter, 1890; Schulze, 1899; Burton, 1940,1954). In 1956, de Laubenfels reported 13 species ofmarine sponges from Brazil. In 1961, Mello-Leitão andcollaborators made the first compilation of Braziliansponges, including 82 species from all three classes andboth marine and freshwater demosponges.The number of studies on Brazilian spongesbegan to increase in the 1960’s, when Volkmer-Ribeiro11