The iconic trapdoor spiders of the family Migidae from south-western Australia are revised, and six new short-range endemic species are described from the southern mesic zone. Using molecular and morphological criteria, we further describe a new genus for these species. All Western Australian Migidae are considered to be threatened using IUCN criteria, with the major threatening processes being inappropriate fire regimes and climate change.

A significant diversity of terrestrial oniscidean isopods was recently discovered in calcrete aquifers of Western Australia. Here we carried out the first morphological and molecular phylogenetic study of this fauna and identified a new southern hemisphere oniscidean family, Paraplatyarthridae fam. nov. This study has important implications for higher-level classification of oniscidean isopods and provides a foundation for ongoing research of this extraordinary subterranean ecosystem.

Tardigrada are one of the most resilient and abundant phyla in Antarctica. Here we sampled tardigrades from soils and limno-terrestrial environments across Antarctica and compared their mitochondrial DNA with other worldwide locations. We found new putative species and much greater diversity than previously appreciated with most Antarctic endemic species restricted to very narrow geographic ranges.

The traditional morphological approach to taxonomy produced controversy over some genera of Doryctinae. Molecular phylogenetic analyses informed a morphological revision showing that the genus Caenopachys and the species C. caenopachoides are invalid taxa, contrary to the genus Sycosoter. This work provides additional evidence that integrating molecular and morphological data is critical to improve our knowledge of the true diversity of doryctine wasps.

New entomological studies in South America reveal a faunal link to Australia in a group of aquatic flies. With formal descriptions and molecular analysis, we show that a genus of midges associates neotropical species in a wider framework of austral distributed insects. It can be inferred from a dated phylogeny that speciation in the late Cretaceous preceded the break-up of the southern landmass (Gondwana).