AAuusstrtraallaassiianan AArrachnachnoolloogygy Price $3 Number 72 ISSN 0811-3696 August 2005 Newsletter of Newsletter of the AustralasianArachnologicalSociety Australasian Arachnology No. 72 Page 2 THE AUSTRALASIAN ARTICLES ARACHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY The newsletter depends on your contributions! We encourage articles on a (www.australasian-arachnology.org) range of topics including current research activities, student projects, upcoming We aim to promote interest in the events or behavioural observations. ecology, behaviour and taxonomy of arachnids of the Australasian region. Please send articles to the editor: MEMBERSHIP Volker Framenau Department of Terrestrial Invertebrates Membership is open to amateurs, Western Australian Museum students and professionals, and is Locked Bag 49 managed by our Administrator: Welshpool, W.A. 6986, Australia. Richard J. Faulder [email protected] Agricultural Institute Yanco, New South Wales 2703. Format: i) typed or legibly printed on A4 Australia paper or ii) as text or MS Word file on email: [email protected] CD, 3½ floppy disk, or via email. Membership fees in Australian LIBRARY dollars, per 4 issues: The AAS has a large number of reference books, scientific journals and *discount standard institution papers available for loan or as Australia $8 $10 $12 photocopies, for those members who do NZ/PNG $10 $12 $14 not have access to a scientific library. elsewhere $12 $14 $16 Professional members are encouraged to There is no agency discount. send in their arachnological reprints. All postage is by airmail. *Discount rates apply to unemployed, pensioners Contact our librarian: and students (please provide proof of status). Jean-Claude Herremans Cheques are payable in Australian PO Box 291 dollars to “Australasian Arachnological Manly, New South Wales 1655. Society”. Any number of issues can be Australia paid for in advance. Receipts are issued email: [email protected] on request. Status box on the envelope indicates the last issue paid for. Lapsed members COVER PHOTOGRAPH: Selenocosmia sp. ♂ (Paynes Find, Western receiving the pdf-version will be notified of Australia) their membership status by email. Mark S. Harvey Previous issues of the newsletter are available at $2 per issue plus postage. Australasian Arachnology No. 72 Page 3 EDITORIAL Conservation Conference” from the 4th – th 9 December in Canberra, with our It has finally arrived! Just days Symposium on ‘Australasian before this newsletter went to the printer, Arachnology – Evolution, Ecology and the Australasian Arachnological Conservation’ is closing in (extended yo Society launched its own website: 15 September 2005). If you want to participate in our symposium, please www.australasian-arachnology.org register soon, at: It was a great effort from all involved, but two people in particular (who are not even http://www.invertebrates2005.com directly involved with our society) deserve a special mention: Randolf Manderbach Registration Fees: Before 15 After 15 (web programming) and Thomas García Godines (graphic design) professionally September September developed and programmed the lay-out of Registration AUD$480 AUD$560 our website, for free! Thanks to both of Student AUD$230 AUD$270 them! You will find further registration * acknowledgements and some information in regard to the ‘philosophy’ of our site in The Registration fee includes: an introductory article on page 4. Conference bag, access to all sessions, Similar to this newsletter, the book of abstracts, welcome reception (4 website will prosper only through December, morning and afternoon tea contributions and feedback from all of each day (lunch not included) you! The current site must be regarded as ---------------------------------- a ‘beta-version’ in relation to its contents. No editorial is complete without Many more pages relating to particular acknowledging the contributors of the arachnological groups and topics are issue! We have major articles from needed and all specialists of such groups Julianne Waldock with a centenary and topics are encouraged to send me appreciation on Michaelsen and drafts for pages following the structure Hartmeyer’s south-west Australian you can find on the website. We will also expedition (page 5) and Michael Rix host your personal home page and will reports on the Australian Pararchaeidae list any link you find important within the (page 12). Thanks also to Cathy Car for context of our society. Please do not an abstract of her Master’s thesis (page format any contribution; we will do that for 13). you! We aim to develop the website as Please consider submitting a the ‘first stop for all things Australasian contribution for the December newsletter, Arachnology’. otherwise there won’t be a December ---------------------------------- newsletter! The early registration deadline Happy reading and internet for the “Combined Australian browsing! Entomological Society, Society of Australian Systematic Biologists and Volker Invertebrate Biodiversity and Australasian Arachnology No. 72 Page 4 MEMBERSHIP mine from my university days in UPDATES Germany, and his graphic designer colleague, Thomas García Godines, both of which spent a lot of time implementing New Members the site, and all that for free! Brad Durrant Department of C.A.L.M. PO Box 51 Wanneroo, WA 6946 [email protected] Sydney L. Jordan Zoology Department University of New England Armidale, NSW 2351 [email protected] Change of Address Tracey Churchill has dedicated a Dr David Evans Walter considerable amount of time, in particular Department of Biological Sciences during the initial stages when we University of Alberta discussed menues, submenues and the Edmonton, Alberta layout of the site. Mark Harvey provided T6G 2E9 CANADA feedback during the whole construction phase and has contributed to its contents. ---------------------------------- Many others have helped by sending contents for pages, in particular Barbara Australasian Arachnological Baehr, Rob Raven and Barry Richardson. Society now online!!! I have learned a great deal during this www.australasian-arachnology.org project. In particular, how patient web programmers have to be with people who promise contents for a site. The design It has been a few years in the making, was finalised months, possibly years, ago from the initial idea to the recent launch and it took a long time to send Randolf of the website of the Australasian the words and images to fill the pages. Arachnological Society. But finally it is And still, there is a lot more to add in the here! future and here we need the help of We have to thank all those who specialists of arachnid groups. Our web contributed to the project. First and site is by far not finished, it’s just a foremost the programmer and designer of rudimentary framework, but will hopefully this website: Dr Randolf Manderbach grow with your contributions. (www.manderbachmedia.de), zoologist turned web programmer, and old friend of Australasian Arachnology No. 72 Page 5 One of the most important parts and the one I would like to prioritise for 100 years on: the spiders of the development is ‘Arachnid Identification’. “Hamburg South-west Australian The identificaion of arachnids in our Expedition”, collected by W. region is extremely difficult, mainly Michaelsen & R. Hartmeyer in 1905 because keys on generic and species level don’t exist for most groups and by Julianne M. Waldock resources have to be compiled from Department of Terrestrial Invertebrates numerous scattered sources, including Western Australian Museum pre 1900s original descripitons, single Locked Bag 49, Welshpool D.C. species descriptions, revisions, partial Western Austraia 6986 revisions, and web sites. This part of th www.australasian-arachnology.org is Just over 100 years ago, on the 5 designed to provide summaries of these May 1905, two Germans disembarked in resources for each arachnid group. It Fremantle from the ship ‘Karlsruhe’ from should also be a place where we can list Bremen on a journey of discovery. amendments to currently available keys Professor W. Michaelsen from Hamburg drawn from the experience of users. and Dr R. Hartmeyer from Berlin Especially for ‘Arachnid Identification’, I commenced their ‘Hamburger Südwest- am interested in receiving information Australische Forschungsreise’. from arachnologist who are familiar with particular groups as soon as possible. If you don’t have your own homepage, www.australasian-arachnology.org can host one for you! Have a look through some of our sample pages via the ‘Arachnologists’ menue. It’s easy: Send me an unformatted file with the contents you wish to see on your homepage, for example ‘Research Interests’, ‘Education’, and ‘Publications’ and maybe some of your favourite links. Of course, we would love to include a photo! Needless to say, since we had help from professionals, all links to email addresses are encrypted so that ‘robots’ (spyders) searching for email addresses for spam won’t be able to pick it up. Volker Framenau Western Australian Museum Figure 1: Collecting stations of the ‘Hamburger Südwest-Australische Forschungsreise (Michaelsen & Hartmeyer 1907) Australasian Arachnology No. 72 Page 6 Over the next six months they Dr Michaelsen also forwarded three managed to survey marine and terrestrial reports of the on-going work, which were sites from as far south as Albany, north to published by the Western Australian Shark Bay and inland to Kalgoorlie, listing Natural History and Science Society a total of 167 survey stations by