Spider research commemorative event planned for WA Wheatbelt town
WA Arachnologist Professor Barbara York Main (1929-2019) at North Bungulla Reserve on her last survey. Image credit: Professor Grant Wardell-Johnson
Fifty years of trapdoor spider research initiated in 1974 by the late Professor Barbara York Main OAM will be commemorated in a weekend long program at Tammin (5-7 September).
The event will honour Barbara’s legacy as a pioneering zoologist, nature writer, and advocate for remnant bushland, and particularly her deep connection to the Wheatbelt and her decades-long study of Gaius villosus at North Bungulla Nature Reserve,
Organised under Edith Cowan University’s Matriarchs of the Wheatbelt banner, it will also mark a transition into the next 50 years of ecological stewardship, intergenerational knowledge-sharing, and Caring for Country.
Barbara York Main (Lady of the Spiders) was a pioneer of Australian arachnology. Born in 1929 on a farm in Tammin, she grew up immersed in the unique flora and fauna of the Wheatbelt.
Inspired by her mother, who was one of the first female students at The University of Western Australia (UWA), Barbara pursued higher education, completing her Honours in Zoology in 1950, defying societal expectations at the time by becoming the first woman to earn a PhD in UWA’s Zoology Department.
Barbara was a trailblazer in arachnology, becoming a world-renowned expert in the genus Mygalomorph (trapdoor spiders), and other arachnids and making significant contributions to understanding the evolutionary ecology of spiders.
Drawing the WA Parks Foundation’s attention to this coming event, ECU Vice Chancellor Research Fellow Dr Leanda Mason said the Tammin program would include educational talks, science communications, community ecology surveys, intergenerational knowledge-sharing, storytelling, and creative engagement with philosophies of kinship and care.
