Calliostomatinae [SEP] parent taxon
Calliostomatinae
Calliostomatinae is a subfamily of gastropods, belonging to the family Calliostomatidae.
Description.
They are somewhat large sea snails - marine gastropod mollusks, with gills and a thin, circular, corneous, and many-whorled operculum. Their shell is conical with angular periphery. The spiral sculpture consists of raised cords, in many cases strongly beaded. The protoconch has a raised hexagonal pattern. The columella is simple above, not folded, and either simply concave below or slightly truncate and toothed. The radula has the
Taxon in disguise
In bacteriology, a taxon in disguise is a species, genus or higher unit of biological classification whose evolutionary history reveals has evolved from another unit of similar or lower rank, making the parent unit paraphyletic. This happens when rapid evolution makes a new species appear radically different from the ancestral group, so that it is not (initially) recognised as belonging to the parent phylogenetic group, leaving the latter an evolutionary grade.
While the term is from bacteriology, parallel examples are found throughout the tree of