Specimens of an undescribed species of Dasyatis stingray (D. sp.) were collected from Nagasaki and Kagoshima Prefectures, Japan. These specimens are more similar to D. akajei (Muller and Henle, 1841), D. laevigata Chu, 1960, and D. izuensis Nishida and Nakaya, 1988 than they are to other congeners obtained from the western North Pacific Ocean. The genetic differences among D. sp., D. akajei, D. laevigata, D. izuensis, and two other congeneric species, D. matsubarai Miyosi, 1939 and D. kuhlii (Muller and Henle, 1841), were investigated on the basis of partial sequences (621 bp) of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) gene. All three specimens of D. sp. that were analyzed showed identical haplotypes and formed a well-diverged clade in the phylogenetic analysis. The pairwise sequence differences between D. sp. and the five other species of Dasyatis ranged from 7.09% to 15.30%. These values almost equalled, or exceeded, the interspecific differences among the latter five species [range, 5.82% (D. akajei vs D. izuensis) to 16.43% (D. kuhlii vs D. izuensis, and D. kuhlii vs D. laevigata)]. Our findings indicate that D. sp. is a reproductively isolated and distinct species.

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The halictid bee Lasioglossum (Evylaeus) pseudannulipes (Bluthgen,1925) is here recognized as a full species although the taxon has been often ranked as a subspecies of L. (E.) algirum (Bluthgen 1925). We present a redescription of the species supplemented by drawings and photographs of diagnostically important characters, including those described for the first time.

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A series of species of the genus Macrocera (Diptera: Keroplatidae) was examined based on specimens collected in the Oriental and Australasian regions and housed in the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A. Of the 17 species identified, 11 are described as new to science: Macrocera argentea sp. nov. from Thailand, Malaysia, and Laos; M. celebensis sp. nov. from Indonesia; M. fissura sp. nov. from the Philippines; M. malayensis sp. nov. from Malaysia; M. nigricauda sp. nov., M. papuana sp. nov., M. rubiginosa sp. nov., M. samuelsoni sp. nov., M. spinulosa sp. nov., and M. xouthothorax sp. nov. from Papua New Guinea; and M. ypsilon sp. nov. from the Solomon Islands. New locality records are given for M. alternata Brunetti, 1912, M. brunnea Brunetti, 1912, M. ephemeraeformis Alexander, 1924, M. mastersi Skuse, 1888, and M. minima Matile, 1988. Keys to the 31 species known from the Oriental region and the nine species from the Papuan region are provided.

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A new species of the pagurid hermit crab genus Catapaguroides, C. umbra, is described and illustrated based on four specimens from shallow water in the Yaeyama Islands, southern Ryukyus, and two specimens from Okinawa Island. It is morphologically similar to C. fragilis (Melin, 1939), C. iejimensis Osawa and Takeda, 2004, C. karubar McLaughlin, 1997, C. olfaciens Alcock, 1905, and C. setosus (Edmondson, 1951), but can be distinguished from them by a number of morphological characters. Catapaguroides umbra sp. nov. represents the fifth species of the genus known from Japanese waters and is one of the smallest hermit crab species in the world.

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A reexamination of the type series of the terrestrial oniscid isopod Lucasioides nebulosus Nunomura, 2000 led us to fully evaluate its generic position. The species is here transferred to the genus Agnara Budde-Lund, 1908. We redescribe in detail Agnara nebulosa comb. nov. based on the type series, and compare it with the closest relative, A. pannuosa (Nunomura, 1987).

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Seven species of the ostracod superfamily Cytheroidea and four species of the superfamily Darwinuloidea were recovered from Lake Biwa in west-central Japan. Four of the cytheroidean species are newly described herein, all belonging to the genus Limnocythere: L. kamiyai sp. nov., L. fude sp. nov., L. levigatus sp. nov., and L. cyphoma sp. nov. Two others are new records for Lake Biwa, namely Limnocythere stationis Vavra, 1891 and Metacypris digiti- formis Smith and Hiruta, 2004. The four newly described Limnocythere species may be an example of a small endemic species flock. Of the Darwinuloidea recovered, two species, Darwinula stevensoni (Brady and Robertson, 1870) and Vestalenula sp., have been previously recorded from the lake. Vestalenula sp. is herein identified as V. cylindrica (Straub, 1952), which was previously known only as a fossil from Europe and the Middle East: this is the first report of a living population. The two other darwinulid species, also belonging to the genus Vestalenula, are new records for Japan, namely Vestalenula lundi (Neale and Victor, 1978) and V. molopoensis (Martens and Rossetti, 1997). Their discovery in Lake Biwa dramatically extends the known distribution of all three Vestalenula species by thousands of kilometers and increases the number of darwinulids known in Japan from three to five.

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