Amphilectus
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Porifera
- Class: Demospongiae
- Order: Poecilosclerida
- Family: Esperiopsidae
- Genus: Amphilectus
Overview
Amphilectus is a genus of marine sponges in the family Esperiopsidae (Demospongiae, Poecilosclerida).[2]
The genus was originally described by Vosmaer (1880).[2]
Diagnostic characters (genus-level)
In Esperiopsidae, generic assignments in the literature rely on microscleres and their skeletal/spicule organization. For Amphilectus, the defining feature emphasized in the Esperiopsidae treatment is that it has a single microsclere type (palmate isochelae), with no additional microscleres.[3]
When distinguishing Amphilectus from the closely related genus Esperiopsis, additional characters discussed include the absence of extra microscleres and the tendency for smaller styles in Amphilectus; however, a commonly referenced style-size boundary is treated as loosely applicable because of overlap among species.[3]
Species richness and biogeography (general)
Amphilectus is reported as a genus containing 17 species, with a mainly temperate/cold-water affinity, occurring across multiple ocean basins including the North Atlantic, North Pacific, South Atlantic, and South Pacific.[3]
Visual Description
(Visual section pending—image inspection could not be completed because downloaded image files were not readable in this workspace.)
Gallery
References
- ↑ Dataset view for Animalia / Porifera / Demospongiae / Poecilosclerida / Esperiopsidae / Amphilectus constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.
- 1 2 Amphilectus Vosmaer, 1880. GBIF. https://www.gbif.org/species/2240836. Accessed 2026-07-09.
- 1 2 3 Rob W. M. van Soest; E.J. Beglinger; Nicole J. de Voogd. Sponges of the family Esperiopsidae (Demospongiae, Poecilosclerida) from Northwest Africa, with the descriptions of four new species.. European Journal of Taxonomy. 2012. https://doi.org/10.5852/ejt.2012.18.