The present microbiome study reports a follow up microbiome characterization of the Porifera Tree of Life (PorToL) project, which has recognized the significance of understanding the evolutionary relationships among diverse sponge taxa (Redmond et al 2012; Thacker et al, 2013; and see http://Portol.org). The aim of this research is to opportunistically expand on the work of Hill et al. (2013) to provide preliminary data that 1) compares the diversity of bacterial communities across eight sponge taxa and 2) compares the differences between DNA and cDNA (RNA) generated 16S rRNA data to distinguish active vs. non-active bacteria.