Abstract
Dendroceratida (Demospongiae) contains two families and eight valid genera. Sponges are usually soft and fragile, always with a fibre skeleton but where fibres are reduced in relation to soft tissue volume, and the endosomal matrix is weakly infiltrated by collagen. Fibres are either dendritic or anastomosing, where in the latter case there is no clear differentiation between primary or other fibres. Fibres always contain pith, are thick, strongly laminated, pith in the fibres is markedly disjunct from the bark, and some genera have cellular (degenerate spongocyte) elements incorporated in the bark and to a lesser extent in pith. Free fibrous spicules occur in one genus.
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© 2002 Kluwer Academic / Plenum Publishers, New York
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Bergquist, P.R., de Cook, S.C. (2002). Order Dendroceratida Minchin, 1900. In: Hooper, J.N.A., Van Soest, R.W.M., Willenz, P. (eds) Systema Porifera. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0747-5_103
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0747-5_103
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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