Porifera (pore-bearers), commonly known as sponges, are sessile, colonial animals that are ubiquitous to most marine and freshwater environments. As an ecologically successful phyla, sponges having existed since the Precambrian (~580 Ma), and were major reef builders during the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic (542 to 65 Ma) (e.g. Krautter 1997, Li et al. 1998, Jackson et al. 2007). Even today, sponges are an abundant and highly diverse phylum, with approximately 8,500 valid species described so far (Van Soest et al. 2012a, b), but at least twice that number are predicted to be discovered in the near future (Hooper & Van Soest 2002; Van Soest et al., 2012a).