Asteropus niger
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 niger
Visual Description
Museum records for Asteropus niger (Naturalis Biodiversity Center specimens available via GBIF) show the taxon represented by preserved sponge material photographed as invertebrate zoology specimens.
Species Recognition and Diagnostic Characters
In the Atlantic revision of Asteropus (Ancorinidae), Asteropus niger is recognized by a combination of spiculation characters. The species account emphasizes that it has two distinct size categories of oxeas (one very small and one very large), and it also differs from other Atlantic Asteropus species in sanidaster raying/arrangement and spicule abundance patterns.
Type Material and Locality
The species is described from a single holotype fragment collected at about 55 m depth from Blauwbaai, Curaçao. The holotype is reported as black in life, and the surface is described as hispid, with epibiosis by the haplosclerid sponge Callyspongia strongylata.
Distribution
The available evidence summarized in the revision indicates A. niger from the type locality off Curaçao (reef slope at ~55 m). The paper does not establish a broader range beyond the examined Atlantic material.
Gallery
References
- ↑ Dataset view for Animalia / Porifera / Demospongiae / Tetractinellida / Ancorinidae / Asteropus / niger constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.