Calicinae Termier and Termier, 1950b

Makhlouf, Yamouna, Lefebvre, Bertrand, Nardin, Elise, Nedjari, Ahmed & Paul, Christopher R. C., 2017, The diploporite blastozoan Lepidocalix pulcher from the Middle Ordovician of northern Algeria: Taxonomic revision and palaeoecological implications, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 62 (2), pp. 299-310 : 303

Subfamily Calicinae Termier and Termier, 1950b

Diagnosis (translated from Chauvel 1966).—Aristocystitids with an elongate to pyrifom theca, composed of numerous plates regularly (juvenile stages) to irregularly organised. Plate surface flattened to convex and bearing central umbo to well-developed spine. Roundish to elliptical peripores including one large diplopore, sometimes covered by a tubercle. Elongate peristome central to a four-fold ambulacral system.

Remarks.—The subfamily Calixinae (sic!) was erected by Chauvel (1966) after the revision of the family Calicidae Termier and Termier, 1950b to emphasize the singularity of this taxonomic group. Kesling (1968) did not acknowledge the different subfamilies (Aristocystitinae, Calicinae , and Hippocystinae) identified by Chauvel (1966) within the family Aristocystitidae . Until a detailed phylogenetic analysis of aristocystitids is performed, Chauvel’s (1966) systematic scheme is followed here, and his original diagnosis of the subfamily Calicinae is here simply translated from French to English. The subfamily Calicinae differs from the two other ones by the shape of the diplopores, the presence of a strong ornamentation, the small size of thecal plates, and the ambulacral pattern.