Stelletta sp. (Figure 10) Material. ZMBN 81643, Solarte lagoon (9° 18.35 N, 82° 10.39 W), on mangrove root, 1 m depth. Additional material examined. Stelletta soteropolitana Cosme & Peixinho, 2007, UFBA-POR 500, holotype, Salvador, Bahia State, Brazil, 100 µm) with our Bocas del Toro specimen. However, when compared with Stelletta sp., S. anancora has (i) only one category of oxeas, (ii) 2–3 triaene sizes, (iii) no anatriaenes and (iv) no dense accumulation of megascleres in its cortex; S. beae has (i) shorter plagiotriaenes (rhabdome length ca 490 µm) with longer clads (ca 200 µm), (ii) shorter anatriaenes with reduced clads (ca 23 µm), (iii) one size of oxea, and (iv) smaller acanthotylasters (ca 11 µm). When it comes to S. soteropolitana it has i) plagiotriaenes twice the size of those in Stelletta sp., ii) protriaenes and iii) no anatriaenes. As we have already shown for S. fibrosa, anatriaenes can be present or absent in the same species, and the missing anatriaenes in S. soteropolitana, at the present time, cannot be used to distinguish the species from our S. sp. The protriaenes found in S. soteropolitana could simply be plagiotriaenes that are more forward oriented. Also, it is important to stress that S. soteropolitana is described from a single specimen and therefore, we have no data on its intra-specific morphological variation, especially concerning spicule sizes. To conclude, we cannot exclude S. soteropolitana as being conspecific with our specimen but in our opinion more data is required to settle this matter.

Published as part of Cárdenas, Paco, Menegola, Carla, Rapp, Hans Tore & Díaz, Maria Cristina, 2009, Morphological description and DNA barcodes of shallow-water Tetractinellida (Porifera: Demospongiae) from Bocas del Toro, Panama, with description of a new species, pp. 1-39 in Zootaxa 2276 on pages 20-22, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.191088