Aplysina azteca
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Porifera
- Class: Demospongiae
- Order: Verongiida
- Family: Aplysinidae
- Genus: Aplysina
- Species: Aplysina azteca
Visual Description
Museum-preserved specimens of Aplysina azteca (Verongiida; Aplysinidae) show the typical “horny sponge” form associated with Aplysina: a firm sponge mass with an external branching/laminar architecture that appears reticulate when viewed closely. Specimen images used here are from the Naturalis Biodiversity Center collections accessed via GBIF.
Species identity and nomenclature
GBIF lists Aplysina azteca as an accepted species name, attributed to Gómez & Bakus (1992), within the genus Aplysina (family Aplysinidae).
Higher-level systematic context (genus Aplysina)
Integrative taxonomy of Eastern Pacific Aplysina emphasizes that members of the genus are large shallow tropical/subtropical marine sponges with variable gross morphology and live coloration typically yellow to green. At the skeletal level, Aplysina is characterized by a skeleton of pithed fibres forming a regular reticulum of polygonal meshes; and the skeletal organic component is mainly alpha-chitin rather than spongin.
Gallery
References
- ↑ Dataset view for Animalia / Porifera / Demospongiae / Verongiida / Aplysinidae / Aplysina / azteca constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.