The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma / edited by A.E. Shipley. Freshwater sponges, Hydroids & Polyzoa / by N. Annandale.

Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma / edited by A.E. Shipley. Freshwater sponges, Hydroids & Polyzoa / by N. Annandale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    A less definite relationship between the sponges aud polyzoa of . the Malabar Zone and those of countries to the east of India is suggested by the following facts :— (1) The occurrence of the genus Corvospongillci in Burma; (2) the occurrence of the subgenus Stratospongilla in Sumatra, China, and the Philippines ; (3) the occurrence of a race of Lophopodella carteri in Japan; (4) the occurrence of a species allied to Plumatella tangan- yilcce in the Philippines. It will be noted that in each of these instances the relationship extends to Africa as well as to the Eastern countries, and is more marked in the former direction. The species of Stratospongilla, moreover, that occurs in Sumatra (S. sumatrensis) also occurs in Africa, while those that have been found in China and the Philippines are aberrant forms. At first sight it might appear that these extra-Indian relation- ships might be explained by supposing that gemmules and stato- blasts were brought to the Malabar Coast from Africa by the aerial currents of the monsoon or by marine curi’ents aud carried from India eastwards by the same agency, this agency being insufficient to transport them to the interior and the eastern parts of the Peninsula. The work of La Touche * on wind-borne foraminifera in Bajputana is very suggestive in this direction ; but that the peculiar sponge and polyzoon fauna of Malabar is due to the agency either of wind or of marine currents may be denied with confidence, for it is a striking fact that most of the characteristic genera and subgenera of the Zone have resting reproductive bodies that are either fixed to solid objects or else are devoid of special apparatus to render them light. The former is the case as regards all species of Corvospongilla and all Indian and most other species of Stratospongilla, the gemmules of which not only are unusually heavy but also adhere firmly; while the statoblasts of Fredericella have no trace of the air-cells that render the free statoblasts of all other genera of phylactokematous polyzoa peculiarly light and therefore peculiarly liable to be transported by wind. * See Mem. Geol. Surv. Ind. xxxy (1), p. 39 (1902).