Polychaetes and allies of Lizard Island.

This Special Volume of Zootaxa has had a long gestation! Way back in 2011, Pat Hutchings was approached by Anne Hoggett, one of the Co-Directors of Lizard Island Research Station which is a facility of the Australian Museum, with the concept of running a polychaete workshop at Lizard Island. Back in 2005, the first Lizard Island taxonomic workshop investigating biodiversity of amphipod crustaceans was run by Jim Lowry of the Australian Museum and Alan Myers of National University of Ireland (Lowry & Myers 2009). This workshop was part of ongoing efforts to describe the fauna of Lizard Island and to populate the Lizard Island Field Guide (http://lifg.australianmuseum.net.au/Hierarchy.html). The idea of Anne’s was to take the advantage of the 11 th International Polychaete Conference which was to be held at the Australian Museum in August 2013. We expected approximately 150 participants from all over the world. Pat Hutchings and Elena Kupriyanova were part of the organising committee for the conference and Pat was the chair of that committee.