Asteropus ketostea
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Porifera
- Class: Demospongiae
- Order: Tetractinellida
- Family: Ancorinidae
- Genus: Asteropus
- Species: Asteropus ketostea
Visual Description
Type-/museum-specimen appearance (from GBIF-linked images)
In image-linked museum records associated with Asteropus ketostea, specimens are photographed as preserved sponge material that is typically encrusting to massive, with a dark external surface and a lighter interior exposed where the specimen is broken or sectioned.
Species Overview
Asteropus ketostea is an Atlantic species of the family Ancorinidae (genus Asteropus). In a revision of Atlantic Asteropus, it is treated as an encrusting to massive sponge (reported thickness up to ~1 cm).[2]
Diagnostic characters (emended by revision)
The revision summarizes A. ketostea as distinguishable among Atlantic Asteropus by the combination of:
- two size categories of oxea spicules,
- very small oxyasters, and
- lack of trichodragmata.[2]
Color (as reported for type material)
In the emended account, the species is described as black externally and grey internally (slightly fading in alcohol).[2]
Habitat / depth and locality (type-based context)
The revision places A. ketostea in a shallow subtidal context and reports collection from about 1 m depth under a rock in the type-based account.[2]
Nomenclature and records
GBIF lists Asteropus ketostea (de Laubenfels, 1950) as an accepted species name and includes basionym information for the original description context.[3]
Gallery
References
- ↑ Dataset view for Animalia / Porifera / Demospongiae / Tetractinellida / Ancorinidae / Asteropus / ketostea constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.
- 1 2 3 4 Eduardo Hajdu; Rob W. M. van Soest. A revision of Atlantic Asteropus Sollas, 1888 (Demospongiae), including a description of three new species, and with a review of the family Coppatiidae Topsent, 1898. Bijdragen tot de Dierkunde. 1992. https://doi.org/10.1163/26660644-06201001.
- ↑ Asteropus ketostea (de Laubenfels, 1950). GBIF. https://www.gbif.org/species/2247896. Accessed 2026-07-09.