Since being discovered in Guam in 1973, this sponge has been spreading to other areas of the Indo-Pacific region and threatening coral reefs from the Maldives to the South China Sea and eastern Australia.

The new species was first described in 1993 by the US marine zoologists Klaus Rützler and Katherine Muzik, and given the name Terpios hoshinota.

Although there are a number of possible causes of the coral mortality, such as bleaching and crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci), black disease seems to be the culprit at Yongxing Island, with identifiable T. hoshinota spicules being found associated with long dead corals.

[4] In 2011 and 2012, survey in Indonesia detected this sponge in a few isolated locations in southwestern Sulawesi, but it was present in a large outbreak around Thousand Islands (Indonesia), Java, in an area where the coral reefs were already stressed and in a relatively poor state.

[7] Terpios hoshinota is a thinly encrusting species, forming sheets 1 mm (0.04 in) thick on dead or living corals.