Axinellidae
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Porifera
- Class: Demospongiae
- Order: Axinellida
- Family: Axinellidae
Overview
Axinellidae is a family of marine demosponges (Phylum Porifera, Class Demospongiae) placed in the order Axinellida. Axinellidae is treated as an accepted family name in biodiversity and sequence databases.[2]
Ecology and occurrence (from selected studies)
Species accounts within Axinellidae illustrate wide depth ranges. For example, two newly described Axinellidae species from British Columbia and adjacent waters are reported as fairly commonly encountered: Auletta krautteri occurs below diving depths (approximately 87 m to at least 300 m), and Dragmacidon kishinensis occurs in shallow water from intertidal areas to 30 m.[3]
Spicule characters used in diagnosis (selected example)
Axinellidae taxonomy can rely on spicule morphology in particular sponge tracts. In the same British Columbia study, the genus diagnosis for Auletta is amended to reflect variability in principal spicules forming ascending tracts: the spicules may be oxeas, styles, or strongyles (rather than restricted to oxeas in an earlier diagnosis).[3]
Visual Description
Axinellid demosponges in image records are typically sessile, photographed as attached three-dimensional growth forms (in situ or as preserved museum material). Visual records frequently show erect, branching to fan-like morphologies with prominent external surfaces (often with mineralized skeletal elements evident on the surface in specimen photographs), consistent with the characteristic macroscopic growth patterns observed for axinellid sponges.
Gallery
References
- ↑ Dataset view for Animalia / Porifera / Demospongiae / Axinellida / Axinellidae constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.
- ↑ Axinellidae. GBIF. https://www.gbif.org/species/8129. Accessed 2026-07-09.
- 1 2 William C. Austin; Bruce Ott; Henry M. Reiswig; Paula Romagosa; Neil McDaniel. Two new species in the family Axinellidae (Porifera, Demospongiae) from British Columbia and adjacent waters. ZooKeys. 2013. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.338.5535.