Aim The Indo‐Pacific is the world's largest marine biogeographic region. It is characterised by different degrees of connectivity among its subregions and harbours the majority of demosponge species currently known to science. Comparisons between regional sponge faunas have been undertaken in the past, mostly based on morphological species identification. The Sponge Barcoding Project, in tandem with regional DNA taxonomy campa...

Mitochondrial introns have a patchy distribution in sponge lineages. Here, we report on the finding of a group-II-intron in Eunapius rarus (Demospongiae, Spongillidae), which constitutes the first report of a mitochondrial intron in freshwater sponges. Group-II-introns are self-splicing ribozymes, and are particularly rare among sponge mitochondrial genomes. The intron contains complete open reading frames (ORFs), including ty...

Accurate taxonomic identification is essential for defining species boundaries and understanding biodiversity. However, this remains challenging for groups where morphological character evolution is poorly understood or diagnostic traits are absent. Sponges (Phylum Porifera) exemplify this complexity due to their morphological simplicity and phenotypic plasticity. This study applies target capture enrichment of Clade‐Specific...

The distribution of marine sponges in the tropical Southwest Pacific Ocean is largely unexplored despite the vital ecological role of sponges in coral reefs and their value as sources of metabolites for drug design. Several collection campaigns to the French Polynesian archipelagos (Society, Marquesas, Tuamotu, Gambier, and Austral) were conducted to assess the bio- and chemodiversity of the island groups. In the course of the...

A recent discovery of freshwater sponges in an unexplored hydrographic basin in north-western Australia provided the opportunity to investigate the genus Corvospongilla Annandale (Spongillida: Spongillidae) using integrative systematics. Emendation of the genus diagnosis is provided. A comparative analysis of a Corvospongilla global dataset of morphological traits together with biogeographic patterns disclosed a new Australasi...

The family Margaritiferidae is a small but widely distributed group within the Unionoida, or freshwater mussels, whose taxonomy and systematics has been the subject of numerous publications. Despite several efforts, there is no consensus on which characters reliably diagnose this family. Herein, we present the results of a phylogenetic analysis of the most comprehensive data set for Margaritiferidae in terms of taxa and phylog...

Vargas, S., Erpenbeck, D., Göcke, C., Hall, K. A., Hooper, J. N. A., Janussen, D. & Wörheide, G. (2012) Molecular phylogeny of Abyssocladia (Cladorhizidae: Poecilosclerida) and Phelloderma (Phellodermidae: Poecilosclerida) suggests a diversification of chelae microscleres in cladorhizid sponges. — Zoologica Scripta , 42 , 106–116. The taxonomic placement of Abyssocladia Lévi, 1964 (Poecilosclerida) is controversial, having bee...

Exceptional ecological niche diversity, clear waters and unique divergent selection pressures have often been invoked to explain high morphological and genetic diversity of taxa within ancient lakes. However, it is possible that in some ancient lake taxa high diversity has arisen because these historically stable environments have allowed accumulation of lineages over evolutionary timescales, a process impossible in neighbouri...

Erpenbeck, D., Breeuwer, J.A.J. & van Soest, R.W.M. (2005). Identification, characterization and phylogenetic signal of an elongation factor‐1 alpha fragment in demosponges (Metazoa, Porifera, Demospongiae). — Zoologica Scripta , ** , *** – ***. Independent molecular markers are needed in order to clarify demosponge systematics. Elongation factor‐1 alpha (EF‐1a) is a frequently used marker in metazoan phylogeny, which has not...