Ancorinidae
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Porifera
- Class: Demospongiae
- Order: Tetractinellida
- Family: Ancorinidae
Overview
Ancorinidae is a family of demosponges (order Tetractinellida), recognized as an accepted family in major biodiversity databases such as GBIF.
Visual Description
Members of Ancorinidae are marine sponges that are commonly depicted (in both preserved museum material and observational images) as upright, branching, or cushion-/lump-like body forms, with solid sponge tissue and an irregular surface. Visual records under this family-level path include multiple genera (e.g., Rhabdastrella, Stelletta, Asteropus).
Molecular systematics and classification notes
Molecular phylogenetic analysis of the sponge order Astrophorida (Demospongiae) included Ancorinidae among multiple families. That study reported that Ancorinidae is not monophyletic in the inferred molecular tree.
The authors propose that discordance between the molecular tree and the prevailing classification can be explained in part by convergent evolution and secondary loss of sponge spicule characters, processes that may occur repeatedly across major lineages.
Gallery
References
- 1 2 Dataset view for Animalia / Porifera / Demospongiae / Tetractinellida / Ancorinidae constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.
- ↑ Ancorinidae. GBIF. https://www.gbif.org/species/8116. Accessed 2026-07-09.
- 1 2 Paco Cárdenas; Joana R. Xavier; Julie Réveillaud; Christoffer Schänder; Hans Tore Rapp. Molecular Phylogeny of the Astrophorida (Porifera, Demospongiaep) Reveals an Unexpected High Level of Spicule Homoplasy. PLoS ONE. 2011. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0018318.