ABSTRACT
One of the most distinctive of all cheilostome genera is Microporella Hincks, 1877. While identification of the genus Microporella is usually uncontroversial, identifying species of Microporella has become increasingly difficult as ever more new species have been introduced. This taxonomic proliferation is largely due to the application of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) which, as with several other ascophoran genera (e.g. Soule et al. 2002), has revealed significant, yet often subtle, differences between geographically distinct ‘populations’ of what were formerly regarded as cosmopolitan species. The lack of a monographic synthesis is now beginning to impede progress in Microporella systematics. Not only do taxonomists working on bryozoan faunas find it difficult to access the widely-scattered primary literature with which to compare their own material, but older, pre-SEM publications seldom provide adequate descriptions of species morphology.
