Hello dear colleagues

 

Paco Cárdenas and I very excited to announce the publication of the following paper entitled:

 

Kelly, M., Cárdenas, P. (2016) An unprecedented new genus and family of Tetractinellida (Porifera, Demospongiae) from New Zealand’s Colville Ridge, with a new type of mitochondrial group I intron. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2016, 177, 335–352.

 

A remarkable sponge with unprecedented megascleres and systematic affinities was collected recently from the Colville Ridge to the north-east of New Zealand. The holotype of Stupenda singularis has the appearance of a tetillid sponge with a perfectly spherical external form, microspined sigmaspires and a radiating skeleton of huge oxeas and triaenes, but the triaenes are huge clubbed orthotriaenes, the upper third of which is acanthose. The sponge represents a new family that forms a strongly supported and separate clade from the astrophorine and Spirophorine tetillid clades, but at the same taxonomic and phylogenetic level. Mitochondrial introns are rare in sponges but Stupenda singularis possesses a mitochondrial group I intron at position 387 in cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene. This intron is the first of its kind in sponges: the self-splicing intron is homologous to a placozoan COI intron whereas the LAGLIDADG endonuclease gene may be related to Fungi LAGLIDADG endonuclease genes. This study provided an opportunity to submit to Genbank ten Tetractinellida 18S sequences (mostly “lithistids”) from Kelly-Borges & Pomponi (1994): these sequences are now more easily accessible through GenBank accession numbers KT356876–KT356885.

 

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