Barbara York Main

Marriage In 1952, she married the Australian zoologist Bert Main; they met at UWA, received their PhDs in the same year, and remained married until his death in 2009.

Career Before starting her PhD, Main worked as a junior lecturer at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. In 1958, two years after receiving her PhD, Main received an Alice Hamilton Fellowship from the International Federation of University Women to spend six months studying spider collections in London at the British Museum/Natural History Museum and at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Main became an honorary lecturer in zoology at UWA in 1979, and later a senior honorary research fellow.

Recognition Awards and honours Main was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in January 2011 for "service to science and conservation as a researcher and educator in the field of arachnology, and to the community of Western Australia". The award was announced in the 2011 Australia Day Honours List. She was also an honorary member of the International Society of Arachnology. In 2018 Main was awarded the Medal of the Royal Society of Western Australia, the first woman to win it since the award began in 1924.

Species and genera named in her honour

Spiders Mainosa mainae (McKay, 1979) Tasmanoonops mainae (Forster & Platnick, 1985) Zephyrarchaea mainae (Platnick, 1991) Tamopsis mainae (Baehr & Baehr, 1993) Nicodamus mainae (Harvey, 1995) Pediana mainae (Hirst, 1995) Storena mainae (Jocqué & Baehr, 1995) Megaloastia mainae (Zabka, 1995) Hersilia mainae (Baehr & Baehr, 1995) Aname mainae (Raven, 2000) Boolathana mainae (Platnick, 2002) Arbanitis yorkmainae (Wishart & Rowell, 2008) Atrax yorkmainorum (Gray, 2010) Missulena mainae (Miglio, Harms, Framenau & Harvey, 2014)

Other arachnids Apozomus mainae (Harvey, 1992) (schizomid) Barbaraella mainae (Harvey, 1995) (pseudoscorpion) Hypoaspis barbarae (Strong, 1995) (mite) Hesperopilio mainae (Shear, 1996) (harvestman) Miobunus mainae (Hunt, 1995) (harvestman)

Insects Adelotopus mainae (Baehr, 1997) (beetle) Ceratobaeus mainae (Austin, 1995) (wasp)

Millipedes Atelomastix mainae (Edward & Harvey, 2010)

GENERA Bymainiella (Raven, 1978) (spider) Barbaraella (Harvey, 1995) (pseudoscorpion) Mainosa (Framenau, 2006) (spider)

Selected works

Books, essays

(1962). Spiders of Australia. Brisbane: Jacaranda Press. (1967). Between Wodjil and Tor. Brisbane: Jacaranda Press. (1971). Twice Trodden Ground. Brisbane: Jacaranda Press. (1972). "Marginal Country", Westerly, 17(2), June 1972, pp. 21–36. (1976). Spiders. Sydney: Collins (Australian Naturalist Library series). (1979, Alec Choate and Barbara York Main (eds.). Summerland. Perth: UWA Publishing.

Papers Main had over 90 research papers published, including:

Main, B. Y. (1952). "Notes on the genus Idiosoma, a supposedly rare Western Australian trapdoor spider". Western Australian Naturalist 3: 130–137. Main, B. Y. (1954). Spiders and Opiliones. Part 6 of The Archipelago of the Recherche. Australian Geographical Society Reports 1: 37–53. Main, B. Y. (1956). Observations on the burrow and natural history of the trapdoor spider Missulena (Ctenizidae). Western Australian Naturalist 5: 73–80. Main, B. Y. (1956). Taxonomy and biology of the genus Isometroides Keyserling (Scorpionida). Australian Journal of Zoology 4: 158–164. Main, B. Y. and Main, A. R (1956). Spider predator on a vertebrate. Western Australian Naturalist 5: 139. Main, B. Y. (1957). Occurrence of the trapdoor spider Conothele malayana (Doleschall) in Australia (Mygalomorphae: Ctenizidae). Western Australian Naturalist 5: 209–216. Main, B. Y. (1957). Adaptive radiation of trapdoor spiders. Australian Museum Magazine 12: 160–3. Main, B. Y. (1957). Biology of Aganippine trapdoor spiders (Mygalomorphae: Ctenizidae). Australian Journal of Zoology 5: 402–473. Butler, W. H. and Main, B. Y. (1959). Predation on vertebrates by mygalomorph spiders. Western Australian Naturalist 7: 52. Main, Barbara York (1960). "The genus Cethegus thorell (Mygalomorphae: Macrothelinae)". Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia, 43: 30–34. Harvey, Mark S.; Main, Barbara York; Rix, Michael G.; and Cooper, Steven J. B. (2015). "Refugia within refugia: in situ speciation and conservation of threatened Bertmainius (Araneae: Migidae), a new genus of relictual trapdoor spiders endemic to the mesic zone of south-western Australia". Invertebrate systematics, 29(6), 511–553. Mason, Leanda Denise; Wardell-Johnson, Grant; and Main, Barbara York (2016). "Quality not quantity: conserving species of low mobility and dispersal capacity in south-western Australian urban remnants". Pacific Conservation Biology, 22(1), 37–47. Mason, Leanda Denise; Wardell-Johnson, Grant; and Main, Barbara York. (2018). "The longest-lived spider: mygalomorphs dig deep, and persevere". Pacific Conservation Biology, 24(2), 203–206. Harvey, Mark S.; Hillyer, Mia J.; Main, Barbara York, et al. (2018). "Phylogenetic relationships of the Australasian open-holed trapdoor spiders (Araneae: Mygalomorphae: Nemesiidae: Anaminae): multi-locus molecular analyses resolve the generic classification of a highly diverse fauna]. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. zlx111.