The particularly speciose cheilostomate genus Microporella includes taxa whose maternal zooids and associated ovicells
present a personate structure, i.e. a particularly developed peristome. Six species of Microporella with personate ovicells
are analysed from material sampled in the Indian Ocean, Red Sea and southeast Mediterranean. Consideration of highly
diagnostic tiny morphological characters displayed by the primary orifice and the avicularium has made it possible to distinguish three new species, M. browni n. sp., M. maldiviensis n. sp. and M. collaroides n. sp., and to better characterise
the other species. Among the latter, two species named by Audouin (1826) from Savigny’s drawings (1817), M. coronata
and M. genisii, are redescribed and neotypes are selected. Additionally, a new species of the M. coronata species group,
Microporella hastingsae n. sp., is proposed following examination of a museum specimen recorded as M. ciliata var. coronata (Hastings 1927). The species dealt with in this study reve