Number 16 (spider)

In March 1974, Australian arachnologist Barbara York Main began a long-term study of spider families. She marked off ten spiders and returned the following year to find new spiderlings, including Number 16, that had likely been born after the first autumn rain of 1974. Main returned to the site annually, sometimes more frequently, for more than four decades. Like other trapdoor spiders, Number 16 spent her entire life in the same burrow, subsisting off the edible insects that walked on her burrow's trapdoor-like silk roof. ==Death==

On 31 October 2016, researcher Leanda Mason discovered Number 16's burrow in disrepair. The spider was gone. Evidence suggested she was killed by a parasitic spider wasp which had pierced the silk plug of her burrow. During a survey six months earlier, Number 16 had been alive. Mason stated that "She was cut down in her prime[...] It took a while to sink in". The spider's death received widespread publicity in late April 2018, with the publication of a research article in the journal Pacific Conservation Biology. Based on the burrow fidelity of females of her species, the researchers concluded with a "high level of certainty" that Number 16 was 43 years old at the time of her death. After retiring, Barbara York Main moved to a care facility for Alzheimer's disease. Leanda Mason, who kept in contact with her mentor, said in 2018 that Barbara "remembers No. 16" but "forgets that she's died." ==References==