Sponges
Porifera
Sponges, the members of the phylum Porifera (/pɒˈrɪfərə/; meaning "pore bearer"), are a basal Metazoa clade as sister of the Diploblasts. They are multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through them, consisting of jelly-like mesohyl sandwiched between two thin layers of cells.
4 branches of this phylum, most-observed first
Demosponges
classDemospongiae
Calcareous Sponges
classCalcarea
Homoscleromorpha
classHomoscleromorpha
Glass Sponges
classHexactinellida
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Porifera in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 48824.