Aulocystidae
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Porifera
- Class: Hexactinellida
- Order: Lychniscosida
- Family: Aulocystidae
Visual Description
Aulocystidae are glass sponges (Hexactinellida). In specimen-based imagery associated with this family in collection datasets, individuals are commonly represented as preserved/fossil sponge bodies exhibiting a siliceous “glass sponge” skeletal look rather than soft-tissue coloration—most often with a cup- or vase-like overall shape and a visible spicule framework.
Systematics and data sources
GBIF currently treats Aulocystidae as an accepted family within Hexactinellida and places it in the order Lychniscosida.[2]
Broader context: integrative systematic framework for Hexactinellida
Systematic resolution within glass sponges is influenced by discrepancies between molecular phylogenies and morphology-based (notably skeletal) characters. An integrative framework has been proposed that combines molecular phylogenetics for sequenced taxa with morphological character matrices for additional (unsequenced) taxa, enabling a more taxon-complete provisional phylogeny and supporting ancestral-state reconstruction of skeletal traits.[3]
Gallery
References
- ↑ Dataset view for Animalia / Porifera / Hexactinellida / Lychniscosida / Aulocystidae constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.
- ↑ Aulocystidae. GBIF. https://www.gbif.org/species/3225. Accessed 2026-07-09.
- ↑ Martin Dohrmann; Christopher Kelley; Michelle Kelly; Andrzej Pisera; John N. A. Hooper; Henry M. Reiswig. An integrative systematic framework helps to reconstruct skeletal evolution of glass sponges (Porifera, Hexactinellida). Frontiers in Zoology. 2017. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12983-017-0191-3.