Around 9,000 species have already gone extinct in Australia and we’ll likely lose another this week – new study

An undescribed ant species in the genus _Opisthopsis_. It's found only in Kakadu, Northern Territory. Francois Brassard, Charles Darwin University

More than 95% of Australian animals are invertebrates (animals without backbones – spiders, snails, insects, crabs, worms and others). There are at least 300,000 species of invertebrate in Australia. Of these, two-thirds are unknown to western science.

This means there are huge gaps in our knowledge of Australia’s invertebrates. Our new study, published today in the journal Cambridge Prisms: Extinction, indicates there has been a catastrophic under-recording of Australia’s species extinctions.