Megataxa

All genera of the world: Families Alloioscarabaeidae, Septiventeridae, Lucanidae, Trogidae, Glaresidae, Pleocomidae, Bolboceratidae, Diphyllostomatidae, Geotrupidae, Passalopalpidae, Passalidae, Belohinidae, Ochodaeidae, Glaphyridae, and Hybosoridae (Animalia: Arthropoda: Insecta: Coleoptera: Scarabaeoidea)

2026-03-31T11:14:33+13:00

There are about 760 genus-group names, available and unavailable, in the families of Scarabaeoidea other than the Scarabaeidae by 11 March 2026. Of these, 457 refer to currently accepted extant and fossil genera, mainly in the Lucanidae (155), Hybosoridae (93), and Passalidae (72) A further >300 genus-group names are given subgeneric rank or placed in synonymy or homonymy. Passalus cancrus Percheron, 1844 is designated as the type species of both Basilianus Kaup, 1871 and Tiberius Kuwert, 1891, making both generic names new synonyms of Pharochilus Kaup, 1868.

All genera of the world: Order Scorpiones (Animalia: Arthropoda: Arachnida)

2026-03-30T12:08:34+13:00

The present contribution provides a consensus classification of the arachnid Order Scorpiones C.L. Koch, 1850, and updates the counts of extant and extinct genera and species through the end of 2025. Including the revisions implemented herein, there are 459 genus-group names available in Scorpiones by the end of 2025. Of these, 318 refer to currently accepted extant genera (220), subfossil genera (1) and extinct genera (97). Fifty-four genus-group names are newly synonymized, raising to 145 the number in synonymy, whereas sixteen genus-group names are revalidated and/or newly elevated to the rank of genus. Including the revisions implemented herein, Scorpiones includes 3,089 currently accepted species-group names (2,918 extant species, 1 subfossil species, and 170 extinct species) and 22 nomina dubia. Forty-seven species-group names are newly synonymized, whereas 43 species-group names are revalidated and/or newly elevated to the rank of species. 197 (62%) of the currently accepted genus-group names were described since 1950. Despite this descriptive activity, the suprageneric phylogeny and classification of Recent scorpions remains in a state of flux and largely decoupled from the phylogeny and classification of fossil forms.

Taxonomic revision of the wolf spider genus Artoria (Araneae, Lycosidae, Artoriinae) from Northern Territory and Queensland, with additions to the fauna of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory

2025-10-30T12:26:35+13:00

Artoria Thorell, 1877 is revised for the Northern Territory and Queensland. Three species are recorded from the Northern Territory: A. parvula Thorell, 1877 (♂♀, type species), A. superelliptica sp. nov. (♀) and A. vectis sp. nov. (♂♀). Twenty-seven species (including 18 new ones) are recorded from Queensland: A. albopilata (Urquhart, 1893) (♂♀), A. berenice (L. Koch, 1877) (♂♀), A. bicornuta sp. nov. (♂), A. catinata sp. nov. (♂♀), A. coclearia sp. nov. (♂♀), A. cunicularia sp. nov. (♂♀), A. geniculata sp. nov. (♂♀), A. globula sp. nov. (♂♀), A. grahammilledgei Framenau & Baehr, 2018 (♂♀), A. halterata sp. nov. (♀), A. hamifera sp. nov. (♂♀), A. laciniata sp. nov. (♀), A. lineata (L. Koch, 1877) (♂♀), A. lingulata sp. nov. (♂♀), A. mckayi Framenau, 2002 (♂♀), A. nasuta sp. nov. (♂), A. orcina sp. nov. (♂♀), A. proboscidea sp. nov. (♂♀), A. quadrata Framenau, 2002 (♂♀), A. reniformis sp. nov. (♀), A. scapulata sp. nov. (♀), A. semicircularis sp. nov. (♂), A. terania Framenau & Baehr, 2018 (♂♀), A. triangularis Framenau, 2002 (♂♀), A. velata sp. nov. (♂), A. victoriensis Framenau, Gotch & Austin, 2006 (♂♀) and A. werrikimbe sp. nov. (♂♀). This study also added 13 new species of Artoria to New South Wales, seven of these species endemic to the state—A. abscondita sp. nov. (♀), A. ancorata sp. nov. (♀), A. cucurbita sp. nov. (♀), A. limitata sp. nov. (♀), A. longinqua sp. nov. (♀), A. serpentidens sp. nov. (♂♀), and A. tenuis sp. nov. (♀), and one also occurring in the Australian Capital Territory—A. pedroi sp. nov. (♂♀). Summing up, 39 species are taxonomically treated in this paper, including 28 new ones. In addition, we propose the beaury and lingulata species-groups, and redefine the lineata species-group based on male and female genital characters.

BlasTax—a user-friendly stand-alone tool to leverage the BLAST+ program for molecular taxonomy

2025-10-28T14:14:58+13:00

We introduce BlasTax, a standalone software tool wrapping the BLAST algorithm for finding regions of similarity between nucleotide and amino acid sequences. BlasTax is designed to serve both general users of local BLAST who seek a simple and user-friendly interface, and taxonomists engaged in phylogenomics and museomics projects. BlasTax is driven by a graphical user interface that makes various BLAST functions accessible without separately installing the BLAST+ executables. It introduces several advanced modes to retrieve matching reads from FASTQ files of high-throughput sequencing of archival DNA from recent or historical collection material, to append matching sequences to existing alignments, or to decontaminate sequence data sets from sequences of non-target taxa. The program also comprises functions for the preparation of sequence files to be used as reference or query for BLAST, as well as utilities for sequence merging based on species labels, codon trimming and codon-aware multiple sequence alignments.