IntroductionThe phylum Porifera (sponges) is known to be the most primitive metazoan group and has 4 classes, namely Calcarea (667 species in the world's oceans), Hexactinellida (589 species), Homoscleromorpha (84 species), and Demospongiae (6922 species) (Cárdenas et al., 2012;Van Soest et al., 2014).In terms of the species richness, sponges are one of the most important groups (12.4% of total number of species) in the Mediterranean Sea (Coll et al., 2010).

Four sponge species (Sycon raphanus, Sycon ciliatum, Paraleucilla magna and Dysidea fragilis) were found on artificial hard substrata of several ports in the inner and middle parts of Izmir Bay. The invasive alien species Paraleucilla magna, is being recorded for the first time from the Aegean coast of Turkey. It was very abundant almost at all studied ports, covering up to 35% of the sampled surfaces. The morphological and distributional features of the four species are described.

1. The coralligenous habitat was studied at the large Mediterranean scale, by applying a standardized, nondestructive photo-sampling protocol, developed in the framework of the CIGESMED project.2. The results provided evidence to support the following statements: (a) the assem-blage pattern is not homogeneously distributed across the four Mediterranean ecoregions studied (biotic gradients hypothesis); and (b) the assemblage pattern does not change significantly when the information is aggregated to higher taxonomic levels (taxonomic sufficiency hypothesis).3. Surrogate taxonomic categories higher than species, such as genus and family, can be used to reveal the multivariate pattern of the coralligenous assemblages.

No abstract

The present study deals with five sponge species [Chalinula renieroides, Haliclona (Halichoclona) fulva, H. (Rhizoniera) rosea, Hymedesmia (Hymedesmia) pansa and Ircinia variabilis] belonging to 3 families (Chalinidae, Hymedesmiidae, and Irciniidae) found at one locality (near the opening of Kızılırmak River) on the Black Sea coast of Turkey. All these species are new records for the Black Sea. Three species (Chalinula renieroides, H. (R.) rosea and H. (H.) pansa] are also new records for the marine fauna of Turkey. All these species were previously reported from Mediterranean Sea and the eastern Atlantic Ocean. The morphological and distributional features of these species are presented.