The female has a pale reddish-brown head and thorax.
The legs have darker rings and the abdomen is mottled greyish brown and beige.
Zephyrarchaea austini lives in suspended leaf litter caught in low vegetation, around knee height, beside small creeklines in open eucalypt vegetation on Kangaroo Island. Leaves supplied by the eucalypts accumulate above the ground, forming the spider’s living space.
In November 2021, the South Australian Museum reported finding two individuals in one batch of litter at a long-unburnt patch. The previously known locality had burned severely in 2019–2020, and the surveyor described this as the first post-fire rediscovery. A small accumulation of leaves supported by low plants became the setting in which living spiders were confirmed.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
The Australian Government identifies disturbance of the litter habitat and wildfire or prescribed burns as key threats. Priorities include protecting known populations and surveying other likely sites. Its profile describes an ongoing project begun in 2023 to develop repeatable survey methods and improve understanding of distribution and, where possible, population size. This work supports conservation planning for the species.