الفهرس 
Taxonomic biodiversity and distributionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The sponges (phylum Porifera) are abundant and diverse mem-bers of benthic populations in coral reef habitats. Despite their sessile lifestyle and a soft, fleshy mass that lacks physical protection from predation, sponges are often found thriving on corals. Sponges are considered taxonomically difficult, and consequently are poorly doc-umented in many regions of the world, like that of the Egyptian Red Sea. Sponges have the potential to provide unusually detailed ecolog-ical information about oceans. In addition, sponges can be considered a model taxon to compare ecological processes across large spatial scales. Sponges produce toxins and other compounds to repel and deter predators, compete for space with other species and for com-munication and protection against infection. Many of these com-pounds exhibited cytotoxic and anticancer activity. This in turn will provide a window of producing active metabolites with high thera-peutic value. Since sponges grow comparatively slow, and their sam-pling is often difficult, more attention worldwide awarded to the cul-tivation of sponges in vitro and to the development of their perma-nent cultures.