External characters
Thin flabelliform fans, highly papillose and fleshy. Fans up to 5 mm thick, uni-planar to multi-planar, on narrow base or short peduncles; or in form of irregularly shaped digits. Specimens up to 300 mm high.
Colour
Pale orange, red, yellow, beige-brown alive.
Skeletal Characters
| Oscules | Flush on surface with bubble-like transparent membranes; less than 5 mm in diameter. |
| Texture | Soft, floppy, fleshy. |
| Surface_Ornamentation | Soft, membranous highly conulose, marked with thick choanosomal axes. Soft conules, up to 6 mm long, evenly or irregularly distributed. Dermal membrane transparent, delicate and collapsible out of water, stretched over conules and supported by choanosomal fibres. |
| Ectosomal_Skeleton | Ectosome apparently non hispid, highly papillose, fleshy, little (reduced) extra axial skeleton. |
| Choanosomal_Skeleton | Plumose tracts ascending to surface, forming irregular reticulation, enveloped by sheaths or slightly to well-developed spongin fibres. In larger specimens, dendritic choanosomal axes up to 5 mm diameter, oriented longitudinally through fan and becoming thinner close to fan margin, irregularly interconnected, or anastomosing forming, an ill-defined reticulation. Most specimens with characteristic grainy pigment (when observed via light microscope) obscuring arrangement of skeleton. |
| Megascleres | Styles of variable thickness, some with rounded ends, 341–643 x 3–29 µm. Anisoxeas and oxeas less frequent, with tips stepped or rounded, slightly bent at one-third of total length, 255–596 x 6–27 µm thick; thin forms are common in some specimens. |
| Microscleres | nil. |
| Mudmap_Author | JNA Hooper |
| Mudmap_Editor | JNA Hooper |
Distribution
In French Polynesia: Tahiti
Ecology and habitat
Outer reef slope, near the pass
