The order Cephalaspidea, also known as the headshield slugs and bubble snails, is a major taxon of sea slugs and bubble snails, marine gastropod mollusks within the larger clade Euopisthobranchia. Bubble shells is another common name for these families of marine gastropods, some of which have thin bubble-like shells. This clade contains more than 600 species.
Pulmonata or pulmonates, is an informal group of snails and slugs characterized by the ability to breathe air, by virtue of having a pallial lung instead of a gill, or gills. The group includes many land and freshwater families, and several marine families.
Polyphaga is the largest and most diverse suborder of beetles. It comprises 144 families in 16 superfamilies, and displays an enormous variety of specialization and adaptation, with over 350,000 described species, or approximately 90% of the beetle species discovered thus far.
Sorbeoconcha is a taxonomic clade of snails, i.e. gastropods, mainly marine species with gills and opercula, within the clade Caenogastropoda.
Megalosauroidea is a superfamily of tetanuran theropod dinosaurs that lived from the Middle Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous period. The group is defined as Megalosaurus bucklandii and all taxa sharing a more recent common ancestor with it than with Allosaurus fragilis or Passer domesticus. Members of the group include Spinosaurus, Megalosaurus, and Torvosaurus. They are possibly paraphyletic in nature with respect to Allosauroidea.
Stylommatophora is an order of air-breathing land snails and slugs, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. This taxon includes most land snails and slugs. Stylommatophorans lack an operculum, but some close their shell apertures with temporary "operculum" (epiphragm) made of calcified mucus. They have two pairs of retractile tentacles, the upper pair of which bears eyes on the tentacle tips. All stylommatophorans are hermaphrodites.
The name Prosorrhyncha is a name for a suborder of Hemiptera, comprising a grouping of the traditional taxon "Heteroptera" plus its sister taxon, the family Peloridiidae. There is no agreement on the status of this taxon, as there are two competing classifications regarding this branch of the Hemiptera; while some hemipterists follow this classification, it has by no means been accepted universally. See the Heteroptera article for the detailed discussion, and a comparison of the two taxoboxes.
The Brachyceran infraorder Muscomorpha is a large and diverse group of flies, containing the bulk of the Brachycera and most of the known flies. It includes a number of the most familiar flies, such as the housefly, the fruit fly, and the blow fly. The antennae are short, usually three-segmented, with a dorsal arista. Their bodies are often highly setose, and the pattern of setae is often taxonomically important.
The Empidoidea are a large monophyletic superfamily of true flies, the sister taxon to the Muscomorpha (Cyclorrhapha). These two groups are sometimes united in the unranked taxon Eremoneura. There are some 10,000 known species within Empidoidea, which are represented on all continents except Antarctica. They are known to have existed since the Jurassic period.
Nemestrinoidea is a small, monophyletic superfamily of flies, whose relationship to the other Brachycera is uncertain; they are sometimes grouped with the Tabanomorpha rather than the Asilomorpha. They are presently considered to be the sister taxon to the Asiloidea. The group contains two very small extant families, the Acroceridae and Nemestrinidae, both of which occur worldwide but contain only small numbers of rare species. One extinct family, Rhagionemestriidae, is also included in Nemestrinoidea.
The Pythonoidea, also known as pythonoid snakes, are a superfamily of snakes that contains pythons and other closely related python-like snakes. As of 2022, Pythonoidea contains 39 species, including the eponymous genus Python and 10 other genera of pythons, all in the family Pythonidae, as well as two lesser-known families, Loxocemidae and Xenopeltidae.
Trochoidea is a superfamily of small to very large vetigastropod sea snails with gills and an operculum. Species within this superfamily have nacre as the inner shell layer. The families within this superfamily include the Trochidae, the top snails. This superfamily is the largest vetigastropodan superfamily, containing more than 2,000 species.
In biology, taxonomic rank is the relative level of a group of organisms in an ancestral or hereditary hierarchy. A common system of biological classification (taxonomy) consists of species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, and domain. While older approaches to taxonomic classification were phenomenological, forming groups on the basis of similarities in appearance, organic structure and behaviour, methods based on genetic analysis have opened the road to cladistics.
The taxonomy of the Gastropoda as it was revised in 2005 by Philippe Bouchet and Jean-Pierre Rocroi is a system for the scientific classification of gastropod mollusks. The paper setting out this taxonomy was published in the journal Malacologia. The system encompasses both living and extinct groups, as well as some fossils whose classification as gastropods is uncertain.
Prostigmata is a suborder of mites belonging to the order Trombidiformes, which contains the "sucking" members of the "true mites" (Acariformes).
Stenopelmatoidea is a superfamily of insects in the order Orthoptera; in some older classifications this group was referred to as Gryllacridoidea.
Septatorina is a suborder of parasitic alveolates of the phylum Apicomplexa
Amphiaspidida is a taxon of extinct cyathaspidid heterostracan agnathans whose fossils are restricted to Lower Devonian marine strata of Siberia near the Taimyr Peninsula. Some authorities treat it as a suborder of Cyathaspidiformes, while others treat it as an order in its own right as "Amphiaspidiformes." In life, they are thought to be benthic animals that lived most of their lives mostly buried in the sediment of a series of hypersaline lagoons. Amphiaspids are easily distinguished from other heterostracans in that all of the plates of the cephalothorax armor are fused into a single, muff-like unit, so that the forebody of the living animal would have looked like a potpie or a hot waterbottle with a pair of small, or degenerated eyes sometimes flanked by preorbital openings, a pair of branchial openings for exhaling, and a simple, slit-like, or tube-like mouth.
The Booidea, also known as booid snakes, are a superfamily of snakes that contains boas and other closely related boa-like snakes. As of 2017, Booidea contains 61 species, including the eponymous neotropical Boa constrictor, anacondas, and smaller tree and rainbow boas as well as several genera of booid snakes from various locations around the world: bevel-nosed boas or keel-scaled boas (Candoia) from New Guinea and Melanesia, Old World sand boas (Eryx) from Northeast Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia, rubber boas (Charina) and rosy boas (Lichanura) from North America, neotropical dwarf boas (Ungaliophis) and the Oaxacan dwarf boa (Exiliboa) from Central America, Madagascan boas or Malagasy boas from Madagascar, and the Calabar python (Calabaria) from tropical West-Central Africa.
Syngnathoidea is a superfamily of the pipefish order Syngnathiformes. It is divided into two families, the speciose pipefish Syngnathidae, which includes the sea horses and monotypic Solenostomidae, the ghost pipefishes, which has just five species. The superfamily occurs worldwide in tropical, subtropical and temperate seas, especially in coastal waters around rock and coral reefs and among sea weed and sea grass beds. However, there are also pelagic species of pipefish and even freshwater species. In total the superfamily comprises in excess of 50 genera and nearly 300 species.
