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Zephyrarchaea Porchi
The Otway Range Assassin Spider ''(Zephyrarchaea porchi)'' is a species of spider in the family Archaeidae. It is endemic to Victoria, Australia. Taxonomy The holotype for the species was collected near the Cape Otway Lighthouse by Dr. Nicholas Porch. The species-specific name is a patronym in his honor. Description The length of the spider is 2.77 mm. Distribution and habitat It is found only in the Otway Range, north of Cape Otway. The only known specimen was caught in a eucalypt forest with a dense bracken fern understory In forestry and ecology, understory (American English), or understorey (Commonwealth English), also known as underbrush or undergrowth, includes plant life growing beneath the forest canopy without penetrating it to any great extent, but abov .... Conservation The abundance of protected forests near the type locality suggest that the spider is unlikely of meriting conservation concern. References Spiders described in 2012 Arch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Gordon Rix
Michael Gordon Rix is an Australian arachnologist, whose publications mainly concern spiders. , he was Principal Curator of Arachnology and Research Fellow in the Biodiversity and Geosciences Program at the Queensland Museum. He has held numerous professional appointments including President of the Society of Australian Systematic Biologists and Associate Editor of the ''Journal of Arachnology''. He is widely published and cited. The World Spider Catalog lists 166 species names and 22 genus names authored or co-authored by Rix, . ''Pseudoanyphaena michaelrixi'', discovered in 2003, ''w''as named after him. His interest in spiders developed as a boy. He has interest in Australian trapdoor spiders and his research into their decline over the past decade. In early 2020 Rix expressed concern over the likely extinction of the assassin spider — ''Zephyrarchaea austini'' — also called the pelican spider, which is only known to occur in the Western River Wilderness Protection Area ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Harvey (arachnologist)
Mark Stephen Harvey (born 17 September 1958) is a museum scientist and biologist. Since 1989 he has been based at the Western Australian Museum. Career Harvey graduated from Monash University in 1983 with a PhD titled "Contributions to the systematics of the pseudoscorpionida (arachnida) : the genus synsphyronus chamberlin (garypidae) and the family sternophoridae". His research interests include the systematics and evolution of arachnids and other terrestrial invertebrates. , he is a member and Vice-President of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. Achievements, awards and recognition Harvey was presented with the 1991 Edgeworth David Medal by the Royal Society of New South Wales, and the Bonnet Award by the International Society of Arachnology The International Society of Arachnology (ISA) promotes the study of arachnids and the exchange of information among researchers in this field. It acts as an umbrella organisation for regional societies and i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spider
Spiders ( order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all orders of organisms. Spiders are found worldwide on every continent except for Antarctica, and have become established in nearly every land habitat. , 50,356 spider species in 132 families have been recorded by taxonomists. However, there has been debate among scientists about how families should be classified, with over 20 different classifications proposed since 1900. Anatomically, spiders (as with all arachnids) differ from other arthropods in that the usual body segments are fused into two tagmata, the cephalothorax or prosoma, and the opisthosoma, or abdomen, and joined by a small, cylindrical pedicel, however, as there is currently neither paleontological nor embryological evidence that spiders ever had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaeidae
Archaeidae, also known as assassin spiders and pelican spiders, is a spider family with about ninety described species in five genera. It contains small spiders, ranging from long, that prey exclusively on other spiders. They are unusual in that they have "necks", ranging from long and slender to short and fat. The name "pelican spider" refers to these elongated jaws and necks used to catch their prey. Living species of Archaeidae occur in South Africa, Madagascar and Australia, with the sister family Mecysmaucheniidae occurring in southern South America and New Zealand. Assassin spiders were first known from 40 million year old amber fossils which were found in Europe in the 1840s, and were not known to have living varieties until 1881, when the first living assassin spider was found in Madagascar. The fossil record of this family was first identified from Baltic amber dating to the Eocene, although many taxa from these deposits have been reassigned to Mecysmaucheniidae, Malka ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemism
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, the Cape sugarbird is found exclusively in southwestern South Africa and is therefore said to be ''endemic'' to that particular part of the world. An endemic species can be also be referred to as an ''endemism'' or in scientific literature as an ''endemite''. For example '' Cytisus aeolicus'' is an endemite of the Italian flora. '' Adzharia renschi'' was once believed to be an endemite of the Caucasus, but it was later discovered to be a non-indigenous species from South America belonging to a different genus. The extreme opposite of an endemic species is one with a cosmopolitan distribution, having a global or widespread range. A rare alternative term for a species that is endemic is "precinctive", which applies to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is a state in southeastern Australia. It is the second-smallest state with a land area of , the second most populated state (after New South Wales) with a population of over 6.5 million, and the most densely populated state in Australia (28 per km2). Victoria is bordered by New South Wales to the north and South Australia to the west, and is bounded by the Bass Strait to the south (with the exception of a small land border with Tasmania located along Boundary Islet), the Great Australian Bight portion of the Southern Ocean to the southwest, and the Tasman Sea (a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean) to the southeast. The state encompasses a range of climates and geographical features from its temperate coastal and central regions to the Victorian Alps in the northeast and the semi-arid north-west. The majority of the Victorian population is concentrated in the central-south area surrounding Port Phillip Bay, and in particular within the metropolit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a Megadiverse countries, megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with Deserts of Australia, deserts in the centre, tropical Forests of Australia, rainforests in the north-east, and List of mountains in Australia, mountain ranges in the south-east. The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south east Asia approximately Early human migrations#Nearby Oceania, 65,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Period, last i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Otway Lighthouse
Cape Otway Lighthouse is a lighthouse on Cape Otway in southern Victoria, Australia. It is Victoria's oldest working lighthouse. During winter to spring, the lighthouse is a vantage point for land-based whale watching as migrating whales swim very close to shores. The government reserved the tip of the cape as the site for a lighthouse. Access to the site was difficult; it was eventually reached overland and construction of the Cape Otway Lightstation began in 1846 from stone quarried at the Parker River. The light was first lit in 1848 using a first order Fresnel lens; it was the second lighthouse completed on mainland Australia and it remains the oldest surviving lighthouse in mainland Australia. It was decommissioned in January 1994 after being the longest continuous operating light on the Australian mainland. At the keeper's cottages of Apollo Bay, accommodation is available in two double studios or in the head keeper's cottage that will sleep groups ranging from two to six ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patronym (taxonomy)
A species description is a formal description of a newly discovered species, usually in the form of a scientific paper. Its purpose is to give a clear description of a new species of organism and explain how it differs from species that have been described previously or are related. In order for species to be validly described, they need to follow guidelines established over time. Zoological naming requires adherence to the ICZN code, plants, the ICN, viruses ICTV, and so on. The species description often contains photographs or other illustrations of type material along with a note on where they are deposited. The publication in which the species is described gives the new species a formal scientific name. Some 1.9 million species have been identified and described, out of some 8.7 million that may actually exist. Millions more have become extinct throughout the existence of life on Earth. Naming process A name of a new species becomes valid (available in zoolo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otway Range
The Great Otway National Park is a national park located in the Barwon South West region of Victoria, Australia. The national park is situated approximately southwest of Melbourne, in the Otway Ranges, a low coastal mountain range. It contains a diverse range of landscapes and vegetation types. History Commercial logging began in the Otway Ranges in the 1880s. After World War One, with improvements to the roads and railways, logging increased massively, peaking in 1961, almost entirely stripping the Otway Ranges of its old-growth forest and causing land degradation issues, but has since been greatly reduced. The forest standing today highlights the lengthy period needed to regrow the giant trees of the past and to reproduce the ecological complexity nearing that of the original wild forest. Historically, several bushfires have burnt through the park's predecessor reserves, shaping its ecology and plant and animal diversity. The last major fire was part of the Ash Wednesday b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Otway
Cape Otway is a cape and a bounded locality of the Colac Otway Shire in southern Victoria, Australia on the Great Ocean Road; much of the area is enclosed in the Great Otway National Park. History Cape Otway was originally inhabited by the Gadubanud people; evidence of their campsites is contained in the middens throughout the region. The traditional Gadubanud name for the cape is ''Bangurac''. The cape was charted by the British when Lieutenant James Grant sailed through Bass Strait in in December 1800. Grant named it Cape Albany Otway after Captain William Albany Otway. This was later shortened to Cape Otway. The British started to colonise the region in 1837 when Joseph Gellibrand and George Hesse became lost in the Otways on an expedition. It was found that Hesse probably died of exposure, while Gellibrand was initially cared for by a local Aboriginal clan but later killed by members of another clan visiting from the Apollo Bay area. The ship ''Joanna'' was wrecked near t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eucalypt
Eucalypt is a descriptive name for woody plants with capsule fruiting bodies belonging to seven closely related genera (of the tribe Eucalypteae) found across Australasia: ''Eucalyptus'', '' Corymbia'', '' Angophora'', ''Stockwellia'', ''Allosyncarpia'', ''Eucalyptopsis'' and ''Arillastrum''. Taxonomy For an example of changing historical perspectives, in 1991, largely genetic evidence indicated that some prominent ''Eucalyptus'' species were actually more closely related to ''Angophora'' than to other eucalypts; they were accordingly split off into the new genus ''Corymbia''. Although separate, all of these genera and their species are allied and it remains the standard to refer to the members of all seven genera ''Angophora'', ''Corymbia'', ''Eucalyptus'', ''Stockwellia'', ''Allosyncarpia'', ''Eucalyptopsis'' and ''Arillastrum'' as "eucalypts" or as the eucalypt group. The extant genera ''Stockwellia'', ''Allosyncarpia'', ''Eucalyptopsis'' and ''Arillastrum'' comprise six k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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