Michael Gordon Rix is an Australian arachnologist, whose publications mainly concern spiders.
As of February 2020[update], he was Principal Curator of Arachnology and Research Fellow in the Biodiversity and Geosciences Program at the Queensland Museum.
[1] He has held numerous professional appointments including President of the Society of Australian Systematic Biologists and Associate Editor of the Journal of Arachnology.
[6] He has interest in Australian trapdoor spiders and his research into their decline over the past decade.
[7][8] In early 2020 Rix expressed concern over the likely extinction of the assassin spider — Zephyrarchaea austini — also called the pelican spider, which is only known to occur in the Western River Wilderness Protection Area on Kangaroo Island, as a result of the catastrophic 2020 bush fires.