Draculoides bramstokeri
Encyclopedia
Draculoides bramstokeri is a small, troglobite
Troglobite
Troglobites are small cave-dwelling animals that have adapted to their dark surroundings. Troglobite species include spiders, insects, fish and others. They live permanently underground and cannot survive outside the cave environment. Troglobite adaptations and characteristics include a heightened...

, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n arachnid
Arachnid
Arachnids are a class of joint-legged invertebrate animals in the subphylum Chelicerata. All arachnids have eight legs, although in some species the front pair may convert to a sensory function. The term is derived from the Greek words , meaning "spider".Almost all extant arachnids are terrestrial...

. Often mistaken for a spider
Spider
Spiders are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, and chelicerae with fangs that inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all other groups of organisms...

, D. bramstokeri is a schizomid
Schizomid
Schizomida is an order of arachnids, superficially resembling spiders and generally less than in length....

 — a small, soil-dwelling invertebrate
Invertebrate
An invertebrate is an animal without a backbone. The group includes 97% of all animal species – all animals except those in the chordate subphylum Vertebrata .Invertebrates form a paraphyletic group...

 that walks on six legs and uses two modified front legs as feelers. It uses large fang-like pedipalps, or pincers, to grasp invertebrate prey and crunch it into pieces before sucking out the juices. Named for this method of dispatching victims and after Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker
Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula...

, the author of Dracula
Dracula
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...

.

The species is light yellow or brown, 5 mm long and known to inhabit six caves on Barrow Island and two on the North West Cape
North West Cape
North West Cape is a large peninsula of land in the north west coast of Western Australia. Cape Range runs down the spine of the peninsula and Ningaloo Reef runs along the western edge...

 in Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

. It is threatened by pollution and damage to caves and is vulnerable to extinction. Draculoides bramstokeri was first described in 1995.

The other three described species of Draculoides also occur in Australia.
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