2. PORIFERA ‣ (173:889/)10,206 spp. worldwide in four classes (Catalogue of Life), (91:229/)662 in Brazil, in all classes. Catalogue of Brazilian Porifera (Museu Nacional, Guilherme Muricy et al., 2011) recognizes 53 spp. of freshwater Porifera in Brazil, some endemic.
For Brazilian deep-sea sponges, see Hajdu & Lopes (110 spp., Checklist of Brazilian Deep-sea Sponges, 2007), where Thenea fenestrata Sollas, 1886 is the deepest Porifera from Brazil (3138m), along Alagoas state.
All data presented below follow Catalogue of Life/Porifera at the global level and CTFB/Porifera for Brazil.
Some checklist worldwide includes Porifera from Caribbean coast of Colombia (81 spp., Velderrama & Zea, Revista de la Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas, 2013) and Porifera from Greece (65:111/215 spp., Voultsiadou, E et al., Biodiversity Data Journal, 2016).
DEMOSPONGIAE
(119:626/)8,398 spp. worldwide, unique lineage also in freshwater, (70:187/)539 in Brazil. Mexico includes 517 spp. of Demospongiae (Carballo et al., Revista Mexicana de Biodiversidad, 2014).
All (6:45/)219 spp. (or 268 in Rasbold et al., Front. Ecol. Evol., 2023) freshwater sponges belongs Spongillida clade of Demospongiae (Balian, 2008). All six freshwater families are fully freshwater. In the Neotropics, the most rich region of this sponges (followed by the Palearctic-59 and Afrotropics-49), freshwater sponges are (3:23/)65 spp. (Balian, 2008), or 77 (Rasbold et al., 2023), in Potamolepidae (Africa, South America, New Caledonia, Fiji, 3/11 in this region | Copeland et al., Zootaxa, 2015), Spongillidae (14/35 in this region) and Metaniidae (5/17 in this region).
The three freshwater sponge families unknowns in South America are Lubomirskiidae (10, endemic to Lake Baikal, S Russia), Metschnikowiidae (1, Caspian Lake) and Malawispongiidae (6, Tanganyika and Malawi Lakes in Africa, Ohrid in North Macedonia and E Albania, Kinneret Lake in Israel and Syria, and Poso Lake in C Sulawesi).
CALCAREA
(26:96/)922 spp. worldwide. Brazil has (10:23/)84 spp.
HEXACTINELLIDA
(26:155/)750 spp. worldwide. Brazil has (9:15/)22 spp. The deepest record for the class Hexactinellida belongs at least two different morphotypes observed at 7180m water depth in the Java Trench on Indian Ocean (Marchiò et al, Marine Biology, 2025).
HOLOSCLEROMORPHA
(2:12/)136 spp. worldwide. Brazil includes (4/)17 spp., in both families of this class, Plakinidae (1/3) and Oscarellidae (3/14).
▉ LAST UPDATE OF PORIFERA IN JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2026