Amphilectus
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Porifera
- Class: Demospongiae
- Order: Poecilosclerida
- Family: Esperiopsidae
- Genus: Amphilectus
Overview
Amphilectus is a genus of marine sponges in the family Esperiopsidae (Demospongiae, Poecilosclerida).[2]
The genus was originally described by Vosmaer (1880).[2]
Diagnostic characters (genus-level)
In Esperiopsidae, generic assignments in the literature rely on microscleres and their skeletal/spicule organization. For Amphilectus, the defining feature emphasized in the Esperiopsidae treatment is that it has a single microsclere type (palmate isochelae), with no additional microscleres.[3]
When distinguishing Amphilectus from the closely related genus Esperiopsis, additional characters discussed include the absence of extra microscleres and the tendency for smaller styles in Amphilectus; however, a commonly referenced style-size boundary is treated as loosely applicable because of overlap among species.
Species richness and biogeography (general)
Amphilectus is reported as a genus containing 17 species, with a mainly temperate/cold-water affinity, occurring across multiple ocean basins including the North Atlantic, North Pacific, South Atlantic, and South Pacific.
Visual Description
(Visual section pending—image inspection could not be completed because downloaded image files were not readable in this workspace.)
Gallery
References
- ↑ Dataset view for Animalia / Porifera / Demospongiae / Poecilosclerida / Esperiopsidae / Amphilectus constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.
- 1 2 Amphilectus Vosmaer, 1880. GBIF. https://www.gbif.org/species/2240836. Accessed 2026-07-09.
- ↑ Rob W. M. van Soest; E.J. Beglinger; Nicole J. de Voogd. Sponges of the family Esperiopsidae (Demospongiae, Poecilosclerida) from Northwest Africa, with the descriptions of four new species.. European Journal of Taxonomy. 2012. https://doi.org/10.5852/ejt.2012.18.