Axinella damicornis
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Porifera
- Class: Demospongiae
- Order: Axinellida
- Family: Axinellidae
- Genus: Axinella
- Species: Axinella damicornis
Visual Description
In situ and collected images commonly show Axinella damicornis as an upright, lobed-to-fan shaped sponge forming a “duster” look (often described by the vernacular common name as the “crumpled duster sponge”). The surface is typically yellow to yellow-brown, and the external form can appear as flattened, branching lobes arising from a short base/stipe.
Ecology and Habitat
Axinella damicornis is described as a widespread Mediterranean axinellid sponge that grows on hard substrata under relatively dim/light-limited (semi-sciaphilous) conditions, occurring down to depths of roughly ~70 m.
Bioremediation Relevance (Heavy-metal accumulation)
Laboratory experiments report that A. damicornis can bioconcentrate/retain heavy metals, with greater accumulation capacity for lead (Pb) than for cadmium (Cd).
- Pb accumulation exceeded Cd accumulation under both single-metal and mixed-metal (Pb + Cd) exposure.
- Under mixed exposure, specimens showed strong stress signs, with necrosis noted in the Pb + Cd treatment.
- Reported retention efficiencies were higher for Pb (up to ~63.1% in single Pb exposure; ~50.8% in mixed exposure) than for Cd (reported ~8.1–8.8%).
Gallery
References
- ↑ Dataset view for Animalia / Porifera / Demospongiae / Axinellida / Axinellidae / Axinella / damicornis constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.