. Among them, more than 100 species of sponges in China are currently recorded. For identifying sponges, the prevalent traditional methods based upon skeletal structure (e.g. spicule methods) generally need a complete piece of sponge and heavily rely on experts mastering English, French and German and ages of experience. Today the number of experts
in the sponge identification has been badly reduced. Though nonskeletal characters such as mode of reproduction, cellular characters, larval morphology have been used to identify sponges, the current classification is as complex as the diversity of sponges themselves [4]. Therefore, it is essential to develop a new promising discrimination method which is more objective, rapid and simple.