Agelasidae
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Porifera
- Class: Demospongiae
- Order: Agelasida
- Family: Agelasidae
Visual Description
Family-level members of Agelasidae are marine demosponges that are often photographed as tube-like, mound-like, or encrusting forms. In available image samples, they show distinct coloration (commonly orange to brownish/yellowish) and a porous, sponge-surface texture typical of demosponges.
General Natural History and Identification Notes
- Substrate and occurrence: Agelasidae are marine sponges reported from the tropical Atlantic and Indo–West Pacific (as summarized in the Miocene spicule-study background and depth generalization). Their deepest occurrence cited in that summary is about 150 m.
- Spicule evidence (family-level): In fossil spicule assemblages, Agelasidae are identified from spicule types. In addition to acanthostyles (described as most common for the family), the same study reports verticillate oxeas bearing concentric whorls of tubercles, drawing morphological comparison to recent Agelas axifera.
- Fossil record: Agelasidae spicules are reported as known since the Cretaceous.
Gallery
References
- ↑ Dataset view for Animalia / Porifera / Demospongiae / Agelasida / Agelasidae constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.