Aplysinellidae
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Porifera
- Class: Demospongiae
- Order: Verongiida
- Family: Aplysinellidae
Overview
Aplysinellidae is a sponge family within the order Verongiida (class Demospongiae). It is recognized as an accepted family name in major biodiversity databases such as GBIF.[2]
Visual Description
Members of Aplysinellidae are commonly represented in biological collections as encrusting or lobate sponges with firm, irregular surfaces and an overall “massive” to cushion-like external form, and they are also frequently photographed in situ under their genus-level names (e.g., Aplysinella and Suberea). Visual records in the TreeOfLife-200M image dataset and specimen/citizen-science observations used by GBIF include multiple species-level and genus-level entries for this family.
Molecular and evolutionary notes
Mitochondrial self-splicing introns (in particular, Group I and Group II introns) can occur in demosponge lineages, including lineages previously reported to include Aplysinellidae. In a COI-focused study of sponge orders Agelasida and Axinellida, the authors summarize prior evidence for mitochondrial Group I introns in sponge families including Aplysinellidae, and additionally report mitochondrial Group II introns in the COI gene for extra sponge taxa, supporting an intron evolution model that may involve horizontal gene transfer events.
Gallery
References
- ↑ Dataset view for Animalia / Porifera / Demospongiae / Verongiida / Aplysinellidae constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.
- ↑ Aplysinellidae. GBIF. https://www.gbif.org/species/4914. Accessed 2026-07-09.
- ↑ Dorothée Huchon; Amir Szitenberg; Sigal Shefer; Micha Ilan; Tamar Feldstein. Mitochondrial group I and group II introns in the sponge orders Agelasida and Axinellida. BMC Evolutionary Biology. 2015. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-015-0556-1.