Two Pione species (Hadromerida, Clionaidae) from the Red Sea: a taxonomical challenge

Abstract

Boring sponges of the genus Pione (Hadromerida, Clionaidae) are easily recognizable due to their spiculation. However, species identification is challenging, as the potentially diagnostic morphological character states of different species often overlap. For this reason, this group of species is frequently referred to as the 'Pione vastifica complex', after the most well-studied species of the genus. Boring-sponge samples were collected in the Red Sea and identified as P. cf. lampa and P. cf. vastifica, respectively. So far, these two species names have usually been considered as valid, although some authors suggested them to be synonymous. Morphological analyses were performed on spicules and micro-erosion patterns by means of both light and scanning electron microscopy. Two apparent morphotypes can be distinguished, mainly by the growth form, but statistical analysis does not support a clear separation in two species. In addition, a DNA barcoding approach using sequences of CO1 has not identified any nucleotide sequence differences. These data support the hypothesis that P. cf. lampa and P. cf. vastifica from the Red Sea are conspecific.

Molecular phylogenies challenge the classification of Polymastiidae (Porifera, Demospongiae) based on morphology

“…Our results revealed the insufficiency of variation of this region in Polymastiidae that might cause some inconsistencies between the CO1 and 28S rDNA phylogenies (see above) and also hindered the separation of the species in Clades II and III based on CO1 alone, while these species were otherwise successfully separated by the 28S rDNA data. The similar problem with the BFolmer'sr egion was reported for some other sponge families, e.g., Lubomirskiidae (Schröder et al 2002), Clionaidae (Ferrario et al 2010), and Irciniidae (Pöppe et al 2010). To solve this problem, sequencing of an additional downstream region of the CO1 gene providing more variability was recommended (Erpenbeck et al 2006, Sponge Barcoding Project at http://www.palaeontologie.geo.uni-muenchen.de/SBP/).…”

Reconstruction of Family-Level Phylogenetic Relationships within Demospongiae (Porifera) Using Nuclear Encoded Housekeeping Genes

“…Indeed, taxonomic controversy extends from the highest levels of classification (e.g., whether the phylum Porifera is monophyletic [17]–[20]) to whether particular genera belong to one or another family (e.g., [21]), or even whether different nominal species are truly distinct (e.g., [22], [23]). In the mid-1980s, van Soest [24] presented a call to include explicitly phylogenetic perspectives in sponge systematics through cladistic analysis.…”

Molecular biodiversity of Red Sea demosponges

“…Cliona is one of the most species-rich genera of the Demospongiae and molecular tools are indispensable for their identification because cryptic species are common in the genus (e.g., Barucca et al, 2007;Xavier et al, 2010). OTU#07 is a member of the Pione vastifica species complex, which was previously revealed by CO1 sequence data (Ferrario et al, 2010). …”

“…Classically, a region near the 5' end of the cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (CO1) has been suggested as a "universal barcoding region" for metazoans (Hebert et al, 2003), but slow evolutionary rates in demosponges reduce species-level resolution by this marker(e.g., Shearer et al, 2002), while high evolutionary rates for Calcarea prevent the application of universal primers (Voigt et al, 2012;Lavrov et al, 2013). Despite these shortcomings, CO1 has been successfully used for species discrimination in selected sponge lineages (see for examples López-Legentil and Pawlik, 2008;Ferrario et al, 2010;Pöppe et al, 2010) and is used for the Sponge Barcoding Database (www.spongebarcoding.org) to comply with the current Barcoding of Life standards. Other markers suggested for DNA barcoding of sponges, such as a region near 3' end of CO1 (I3M11, Erpenbeck et al, 2006), were successfully applied on various sponge lineages, but are hampered by the need of nested PCR, which reduces amplification success (e.g., Erpenbeck et al, 2002;López-Legentil and Pawlik, 2008).…”