Queensland Museum

Molecular and morphological evidence has reshaped our understanding of oyster diversity, distributions and phylogeny, revealing widespread misidentifications and undescribed species. On Australia's east coast the Sydney rock oyster, Saccostrea glomerata, traditionally thought to be reef-building both intertidally and subtidally, is likely a predominantly intertidal species. Examination of museum specimens and historical literature indicates that subtidal S. glomerata identifications are likely incorrect and instead represent multiple species, all with reef-building capacity. Broadly, clarifying species identities and distributions by tidal zone and depth will be an essential first step for guiding subtidal oyster reef restoration in tropical and subtropical areas. Given this re-interpretation, the threatened status of S. glomerata reefs should be re-assessed to reflect their true, predominantly intertidal distribution.

Eight new cicada species from the eucalypt forests of eastern Australia are described in the genus Yoyetta Moulds, 2012. Yoyetta argentea sp. nov. is found in the central highlands of Queensland; Y. burwelli sp. nov. is widespread in southeastern Queensland and also occurs in far northern New South Wales; Y. clara sp. nov. occurs in the central highlands and in inland south-eastern Queensland; Y. eastwoodi sp. nov. is found in subcoastal central and south-eastern Queensland; Y. longirostra sp. nov. is restricted to south-eastern Queensland; Y. penetrans sp. nov. is known from coastal north-eastern New South Wales; Y. wrightae sp. nov. is distributed patchily through coastal and inland south-eastern Queensland; Y. zagona sp. nov. occurs in inland southern Queensland, inland New South Wales and north-western Victoria. The new species are broadly all allied to Y. tristrigata (Goding & Froggatt) and males of all species produce simple ticking or clicking songs and generally remain inconspicuous in the canopy. Within each species a description, as well as a section on distinguishing features, distribution, habitat and behaviour, and calling song structures are provided and illustrated where available. A revised key to species for the genus Yoyetta Moulds is also provided.

The widespread Indo-West Pacific ghost crab, Ocypode ceratophthalmus (Pallas, 1772) is found to be a species-complex containing three distinct species. An Indian Ocean form, O. celadon sp. nov. occurs along the shores of East Africa, thence becoming an insular species spreading eastwards as far as Christmas Island. A central Indo-West Pacific species, O. ceratophthalmus is found from about Pakistan eastwards to Fiji, north to the southern part of the main islands of Japan and south down the coasts of Australia, and is the dominant species along the continental beaches throughout the region. O. urvillii Gu & eacute;rin, 1829, is newly raised from synonymy for an insular Pacific Ocean form that extends from Hawai'i and Clipperton Island in the central East Pacific, westwards into the northeastern Indian Ocean as far the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. A mitochondrial genetic study from cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) supports the recognition of these three species. Each species can be relatively easily separated by claw characters, including the stridulatory crests on the major chela, the form of the male first gonopods (G1), the live colours and patterns, and other characters related to granulation and spination.

Bathynomus paracelensis Huang & Kawai, 2025 was recently described based on four female specimens from the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, and distinguished from B. vaderi Ng, Sidabalok & Nguyen, 2025 from Vietnam, by 14 morphological characters, with the primary ones being the body size and shape, pleotelson—size ratio and structure of the spines, as well as the numbers of uropod robust setae and their shape. Morphological comparisons of the type specimens of both species show that none of these characters are valid, with the two species also share nearly identical COI and 16S mitochondrial DNA sequences. As such, B paracelensis is here regarded as a junior synonym of B vaderi.

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.