Porifera of Greece: an updated checklist

Abstract

BackgroundThe checklist of Porifera of Greece was created in the framework of the Greek Taxon Information System (GTIS), an initiative of the LifeWatchGreece Research Infrastructure (ESFRI) that has resumed efforts to compile a complete checklist of species recorded from Greece. An updated checklist of Porifera was created on the basis of a list of the Aegean Demospongiae and Homoscleromorpha published one decade ago. All records of species known to occur in Greek waters were taxonomically validated and cross-checked for possible inaccuracies and omissions. Then, all recent publications were reviewed and the species recorded from 2006 to date were added to the list.New informationThe updated checklist of Porifera of Greece comprises 215 species, classified to 111 genera, 65 families, 24 orders, and 4 classes. In total, 34 new additions were made to the previous species list (8 Calcarea, 17 Demospongiae, 1 Hexactinellida, and 6 Homoscleromorpha) with Calcarea being listed for the first time from the area. The demosponge orders Poecilosclerida, Dictyoceratida, Tetractinellida, Haplosclerida, and Suberitida have the highest number of species covering 62% of the known Greek sponge species richness. It is worth mentioning that 8 species have been first described from Greek waters, 7 of which are considered endemic to this area. Our bibliographic overview also revealed knowledge gaps with regard to specific habitats typically rich in sponge diversity, and marine sectors of Greece.

Sponge Community Patterns in Mesophotic and Deep-Sea Habitats in the Aegean and Ionian Seas

“…The poriferan orders Suberitida, Poecilosclerida, Dictyoceratida, Tetractinellida, Axinellida and Haplosclerida presented the highest number of species, contributing 83% of the species in the studied ecoregions, in agreement with the latest (2016) updated checklist of the Porifera of Greece by Voultsiadou et al [58], where the same orders (with the exception of Axinellida) dominated in terms of species number, constituting 62% of the sponge species richness.…”

“…The vast majority of sponge species identified in this study were already known as elements of the Aegean poriferan fauna [48,58], while two species (Polymastia mamilaris and Siphonochalina coriacea) are newly recorded for the Aegean Sea and six species (Axinyssa aurantiaca, Desmacella annexa, D. inornata, Echinoclathria translata, Hymeniacidon perlevis and Stylocordila pellita) are first recorded from the east Ionian Sea (Table 1).…”

Sponges-Cyanobacteria associations: Global diversity overview and new data from the Eastern Mediterranean

“…Regarding sponge diversity and ecology, the Aegean Sea constitutes the most thoroughly studied marine area of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, and one of the best studied in the entire Mediterranean Sea [ 24 , 25 , 26 ]. Τhe species list of cyanobacteria has been recently published for this area [ 27 ], but no information exists on the associations of sponges with cyanobacteria.…”

Species delimitation analysis indicates cryptic speciation forTerpios gelatinosus(Porifera, Demospongiae) from coastal regions of the northeastern Mediterranean Sea

“…It has been reported that the color alters to deep blue in the presence of a symbiotic alga (Ackers et al ., 2007). So far, T. gelatinosus records have been given in Italy (Bertolino et al ., 2014), Portugal (Monteiro, 2013), Greece (Voultsiadou-Koukoura et al ., 2016) and the Mediterranean coast of Israel with single public DNA barcode record in database (Idan et al ., 2018). The species was also reported in the eastern Aegean Sea (Topaloğlu and Evcen, 2014).…”