Biodiversity of Porifera in Brazil

The sponge fauna of Brazil is highly diverse and still underestimated. Until 2011, 443 species were recorded, representing 5.3% of the Porifera diversity worldwide. Nowadays, the complete list of sponge species in Brazil is available online at the Taxonomic Catalog of the Brazilian Fauna (CTFB). This study aimed to present the current state of knowledge about the Porifera biodiversity in Brazil based on the list of valid extant sponge species up to December 2022 in the CTFB and World Porifera Database (WPD). By then, a total of 612 species of sponges were listed from Brazil, including 551 marine and 61 freshwater sponges. Demospongiae is the most diverse class, with 508 species, followed by Calcarea (68), Hexactinellida (19) and Homoscleromorpha (17). Among the Brazilian sponge fauna, 310 species are endemic (50%), with the majority belonging to the Class Demospongiae (256). Marine sponges are distributed across all the Brazilian coast and the regions with the highest number of marine species were the Northeast and Southeast regions, with 343 and 229 species, respectively. Among the hydrographic basins, freshwater sponges are more diverse in the Paran & aacute; basin, with 33 species recorded. The sponge diversity in Brazil is probably higher, since these numbers are limited by the collection effort in each region.