The Australian Museum is a heritage-listed museum at 1 William Street, Sydney central business district, New South Wales, Australia. It is the oldest museum in Australia, and the fifth oldest natural history museum in the world, with an international reputation in the fields of natural history and anthropology. It was first conceived and developed along the contemporary European model of an encyclopedic warehouse of cultural and natural history and features collections of vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, as well as mineralogy, palaeontology and anthropology. Apart from exhibitions, the museum is also involved in Indigenous studies research and community programs. In the museum's early years, collecting was its main priority, and specimens were commonly traded with British and other European institutions. The scientific stature of the museum was established under the curatorship of Gerard Krefft, himself a published scientist.The museum is located at the corner of William Street and College Street in the Sydney central business district, in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, and was originally known as the Colonial Museum or Sydney Museum. The museum was renamed in June 1836 by a sub-committee meeting, when it was resolved during an argument that it should be renamed the "Australian Museum". The Australian Museum building and its collection was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999. The museum is mentioned in the poem William Street by notable Australian poet Henry Lawson.Its current CEO and Executive Director is Kim McKay AO..
A small, dark form of Chalinolobus gouldii (Gould's wattled bat) has been recognised in the 'Top End' of the Northern Territory (i.e. north of similar to 18 degrees S), Australia, for some time, but its taxonomic identity has remained uncertain. Re-examination of museum specimens showed several individuals differing from both C. gouldii and C. nigrogriseus (hoary wattled bat) in external morphology and dentition, notably by the combined presence of an enlarged pendent skin lobe at the base of the ear and an incipient secondary cusp on the upper first incisor, which are diagnostic traits of Chalinolobus orarius (coastal wattled bat), a species recently described from Papua New Guinea. Comparative analyses of cranial measurements and external features show close agreement between Northern Territory specimens and the type series of C. orarius, supporting their identification as C. orarius. All confirmed Northern Territory records occur within 5 km of the coast, below 100 m elevation, in mangrove and adjacent Eucalyptus open forest habitats. Current data suggest that the species is uncommon and possibly rare in northern Australia. The recognition of C. orarius in northern Australia represents an addition to the Australian bat fauna and highlights the need for targeted surveys across northern Australia to determine the species' distribution, abundance, taxonomic status and conservation status. It also necessitates revised species identifications for all Chalinolobus specimens from northern Australia held in museum collections worldwide.
Four new species of the flabby whalefish genus Gyrinomimus Parr, 1934 are described based on female specimens: G. alepissp. nov. from the southern Atlantic, G. amaokaisp. nov. from the Northern Hemisphere, G. johnpaxtoni Su & Ho, sp. nov. from the Pacific and Atlantic, and G. johnsonisp. nov. from the northern Pacific. Each of the new species differs from congeners in the length of gill filaments on fourth gill arch, numbers of dorsal- and anal-fin rays, gill rakers, head and lateral-line pores, anal lappets and vertebrae, distribution of cavernous tissue, and the shape and length/width ratio of copular tooth plate. Moreover, three species groups are defined: G. bruuni species group, G. grahami species group, and G. myersi species group. Each group differs in the length of gill filaments, numbers of anal lappet and gill rakers, and distribution of cavernous tissue. Diagnostic characters and detailed descriptions of the new species are provided and compared to congeners, with variations discussed. Finally, an identification key to species groups and all known species is provided.
To date, only one species of the terebellid polychaete genus Thelepus Leuckart, 1849 has been described from Africa: T. pequenianus Augener, 1918. During a 2024 biodiversity survey in Arguin National Park (Mauritania), we discovered a second African species that we describe as Thelepus arguinensis sp. nov. It is characterised by notopodia restricted to only 20-35% of the body, three pairs of branchiae, each with numerous filaments, dorsal branchial gap absent, and thoracic uncini lacking a prow. Phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial 16S and COI sequences confirm its distinctiveness from all congeners with available data. We also redescribe the polynoid Lepidonotus hupferi Augener, 1918 found sharing the tubes of some specimens of T. arguinensis sp. nov. and provide the first molecular data for the species, while extending its known distribution to Mauritania. This study documents a previously unreported facultative, likely commensalistic, association between the two species, highlighting both the underestimated diversity of West African polychaetes and the limited knowledge on the terebellid-polynoid relationships in the region.
White’s Skinks, Liopholis whitii (Lacépède 1804) are widely distributed throughout rocky habitats of temperate south-eastern Australia, with a highly disjunct population occurring in Mutawintji National Park in arid far western New South Wales. Based on an analysis of genome-wide nuclear single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and an assessment of variation in morphology, we provide an appraisal of the group’s evolutionary history and re-evaluate the taxonomic status of candidate lineages. We reveal the presence of three major genetic lineages, including two lineages from temperate south-eastern Australia, and another representing the isolated arid population from Mutawintji National Park. We herein apply the name Liopholis whitii to the temperate “southern” lineage which occurs in South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania; resurrect the name Liopholis compressicauda (Quoy & Gaimard 1824) for the temperate “northern” lineage from southern Queensland, New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory and north-eastern Victoria; and describe the arid lineage from Mutawintji National Park as Liopholis mutawintji sp. nov. Liopholis mutawintji sp. nov. is of particular conservation concern and likely eligible for listing as Critically Endangered under multiple IUCN Red List Criteria.
Aim The use of genetic analyses has become ubiquitous in conservation planning and management. Typically, such analyses are employed at the species-level, though as genetic data accrue, it is now possible to consider the genetic composition of multiple species across landscapes. Such macrogenetic perspectives can reveal the potential genetic ramifications of extreme disturbance events, such as the catastrophic Australian 'Black Summer' wildfires of 2019-2020. Here, we present a framework to examine the potential genetic impacts of this event upon populations of a variety of taxa.Location Eastern Australia.Methods Using hundreds of samples spanning dozens of frog, mammal and reptile species, we demonstrate a macrogenetic approach for using reduced-representation sequencing data from several species to describe the fine-scale distribution of genetic diversity across a landscape in a robust, comparable manner. We do so using standard population genetics metrics (heterozygosity); though we also propose a novel complementary measure-'weighted distinctiveness'-to identify important regions of the landscape where narrowly distributed and evolutionarily distinct populations from multiple species reside.Results Although variable across the study area, we show that these unprecedented fires generally burned areas where genetic diversity of sampled taxa was higher than that of areas remaining unburned. Additionally, regions harbouring high concentrations of evolutionarily distinct and narrowly distributed species were disproportionately represented in burned regions, with the potential cross-taxonomic adverse effects being greatest in Australia's southeast and central eastern seaboard regions.Main Conclusions Our findings suggest that the macrogenetic impacts of the Black Summer wildfires have the potential to have been more severe than initially apparent. Importantly, they also demonstrate how conservation genetics principles often applied at a species level can be expanded to landscapes, whilst accounting for the challenges that arise when aggregating across taxonomic groups, thereby improving our understanding of the overall impacts of large-scale disturbance events.
