Cliona patera was placed the genus Spongia when fi rst
described by Hardwicke (1820). Spongia was diagnosed by
Linnaeus in 1759 and used for the archetypal Greek bath
sponge, Spongia offi cialis, in his classifi cation. Over the
following 100 years or so, authors assigned almost all sponge
species to Spongia (Cook & Bergquist, 2002). Thirty-eight
years later, Schlegel (1858) used the name Spongia (Poterion)
Neptuni, probably with no knowledge of Hardwicke (1820
& 1822), for a sponge universally considered to be identical
to Hardwicke’s Spongia patera. Poterion refers to a cup or
drinking vessel, and derived from “piðnw”, a Greek word
meaning