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Chalinidae Gray (Demospongiae, Haplosclerida), including synonyms Renieridae Ridley, Gelliidae Ridley, Haliclonidae de Laubenfels and Adociidae de Laubenfels, belongs to the suborder Haplosclerina together with Callyspongiidae de Laubenfels and Niphatidae Van Soest. Chalinidae have a world-wide distribution with possibly hundreds of extant species living in all parts of the oceans. Twenty-seven nominal genera have been described, but only four genera are presently considered valid: Chalinula,Cladocroce, Dendroxea and Haliclona,the latter containing the subgenera Gellius, Halichoclona,Haliclona, Reniera, Rhizoniera and Soestella. Chalinidae differ from other haplosclerid families by the possession of a unispicular tangential ectosomal skeleton and a choanosomal skeleton with unispicular secondary lines. Characters in common with other marine haplosclerid families are smooth, diactinal megascleres and microscleres, if present, in the form of sigmas, toxas, raphides and microxeas. Some species exhibit extremely high variability in morphological characters, inhibiting their reliable identification by the non-specialist, whilst others are remarkably constant in their features. |
