Axiidae Huxley, 1879

Axiidae Huxley, 1879: 785 .— Poore & Collins 2009: 222 (diagnosis, synonymy). Calocarididae Ortmann, 1891: 47 .

Eiconaxiidae Sakai & Ohta, 2005: 69 .

Eiconaxiopsididae Sakai, 2011: 289 –291.

Remarks. The family Axiidae sensu lato was diagnosed by Sakai & de Saint Laurent (1989), Poore (1994) and Poore & Collins (2009). The last paper argued the synonymy of Calocarididae Ortmann, 1891 and Eiconaxiidae Sakai & Ohta, 2005 based on cladistic and molecular analyses. Eiconaxius Spence Bate, 1888 was shown to share several characters with Platyaxius Sakai, 1994 making Eiconaxiidae hard to justify. Tsang et al. (2008) found Axiidae paraphyletic with respect to these two families, but based their finding on few taxa. Komai & Tsuchida (2012) synonymised Eiconaxiopsis Sakai, 2011 with Eiconaxius and Eiconaxiopsididae Sakai, 2011 with Axiidae arguing that they are paraphyletic taxa. Unfortunately, they failed to realise that both were based in part on an observational error.