PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON lll(4):737-773. 1998. Sponges, genus Mycale (Poecilosclerida: Demospongiae: Porifera), from a Caribbean mangrove and comments on subgeneric classification Eduardo Hajdu and Klaus Rutzler (EH) Institute of Systematics and Population Biology, University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 94766 1090-GT, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Present address: Departamento de Invertebrados, Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Quinta da Boa Vista, s/n 20940-040, Rio de Janeiro, RJ; and Centro de Biologia Marinha, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Sebastiao, SP, Brazil; (KR) Department of Invertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Insdtution, Washington, D.C. 20560, U.S.A. Abstract. — Eight species of Mycale Gray (Mycalidae, Poecilosclerida, De-mospongiae) are described from marine mangroves on the barrier reef of Be-lize, Central American Caribbean. Two are new: Mycale (Aegogropila?) car-migropila and M. (Ae.) citrina. Other species found are M. {Ae.) arndti, M. (Arenochalina) laxissima, M. (Carmia) magnirhaphidifera, M. (C.) microsig-matosa, M. (Mycale) laevis and M. (Paresperella) sp. A key to the 17 recog-nized Caribbean species of Mycale is provided. Ectosomal skeletal patterns currently used as diagnostic characters for subgenera of Mycale may be inad-equate for phylogenetic analysis, but reliable alternative congruent traits have not yet been identified to replace these. More than 150 species of Mycale Gray have been described worldwide (Doumenc & Levi 1987), with representatives in most marine habitats. They are common in both polar and tropical seas, and have been re-ported from intertidal pools abyssal depths (Hartman 1982). Contemporary mono-graphs have added great numbers of new species (Levi 1963, van Soest 1984, Berg-quist & Fromont 1988, Hajdu & Desquey-roux-Faundez 1994), indicating that many more undescribed taxa are yet to be found. Our study of the rich marine mangrove eco-system of Belize (Rutzler & Feller 1988, 1996; de Weerdt et al. 1991) is no exception and has revealed two new species of Myc-ale. Recent findings of metabolites with pharmacological potential from species of Mycale (e.g.. Capon & Macleod 1987; Per-ry et al. 1988, 1990; Fusetani et al. 1989; Corriero et al. 1989; Butler et al. 1991; Northcote et al. 1991; Hori et al. 1993) have strengthened the need for a better as-sessment of the genus' biodiversity, for a stable system of classification, and for bet-ter descriptions to differentiate between al-lopatric sibling species. It has been convincingly argued that de-scriptions of Mycale are often unreliable in respect to noting size categories of micro-scleres (Hentschel 1913, Doumenc & Levi 1987). Accordingly, special attention was here paid to this important characteristic. Details of microsclere shape too were long considered to be useful characters because of their low adaptive value (Ridley & Den-dy 1887, Dendy 1921, Hajdu et al. 1994a, Hajdu & Desqueyroux-Faundez 1994). This view is adopted here and supported by our scanning electron micrography. Materials and Methods Sponges were collected by the authors and Kathleen P. Smith during several sur-
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