Collaborating Mycologists
Community · Collaborators
Collaborating Mycologists
Behind every jar of Simbiosis there's a conversation that began in the forest. The mycologists who collaborate with us are not a name on a label: they are the ones who walk Mexico's soils with their eyes low, who recognize a species by the smell of damp earth, and who translate that field knowledge into laboratory rigor. Their work is the bridge between formal science and the fungal memory of our communities. Here we honor those who help us name, understand, and respect the Fungi Kingdom.
Mycologist · PhD Candidate, Universidad de Guadalajara
Alonso Cortés-Pérez
Mexican mycologist dedicated to the study of wild edible mushrooms and their ethnomycological value, and one of Mexico's most active specialists in bioluminescent fungi. He began documenting the fungal biodiversity of Veracruz's cloud forests at the Forestry Research Institute of the Universidad Veracruzana; today he is a PhD candidate in the Department of Botany and Zoology at the Universidad de Guadalajara, where he collaborates with Dr. Laura Guzmán-Dávalos, one of the most recognized figures in Mexican mycological taxonomy.
He has described more than a dozen new species of bioluminescent Mycena for science: in 2019 he took part in registering six new species and a new record for Mexico in the country's cloud forests; in 2023 he described five more new species within the section Calodontes. He is also co-author — together with César Kevin Pérez-Pacheco — of the first record of Scleroderma texense (Boletales) as an edible species in the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca, published in Scientia Fungorum, the journal of the Mexican Mycological Society (vol. 52, 2021). His research documents how communities recognize, gather, and make use of species that science is only beginning to catalog: a reminder that, in Mexico, fungal knowledge lives as much in herbaria as in the words of those who forage.
Field Naturalist · Tepoztlán, Morelos
Robert Kelly
Field naturalist based in Tepoztlán, Morelos, enthusiastically dedicated to the study of arthropod-pathogenic fungi (Cordyceps sensu lato) of the Sierra del Tepozteco. His knowledge of the territory has been formally recognized in the scientific literature: the study «Diversity and new records of Cordyceps s.l. (Hypocreales: Ascomycota), arthropod-pathogenic fungi from the state of Morelos, Mexico» (Castro-Bustos et al., Acta Botánica Mexicana, no. 131, 2024) thanks him for guiding sampling toward the localities of San Juan Tlacotenco and Santo Domingo Ocotitlán, in Tepoztlán. A specimen he collected is deposited in the Entomopathogenic Fungi collection of the Biological Research Center of the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos (LEyF-CIB), and corresponds to the first record of Cordyceps mexicana for the state of Morelos.
Biologist and Artist · Oaxaca
César Kevin Pérez-Pacheco
Scientist and artist, in equal parts. César is co-author — together with Alonso Cortés-Pérez — of the first record of Scleroderma texense as an edible species in Oaxaca (Scientia Fungorum, vol. 52, 2021), and he is also the hand behind the serigraphs that give Simbiosis its face. For him, mycology and art are not two separate trades: they are two ways of looking at the same mycelium. His graphic work translates the structure, texture, and mystery of mushrooms into ink, and brings the Fungi Kingdom closer to those who arrive first for the beauty and stay for the science.
In memoriam
Professor Horalia Díaz-Barriga
Foundational mentor of Simbiosis, and one of the figures who built Michoacán mycology as it is known today. She founded and shaped the Mycological Collection of the Herbarium at the Faculty of Biology of the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo (UMSNH), an archive still consulted by researchers today.
Her 1988 work, «Contribution to the knowledge of the macromycetes of the state of Michoacán» (Acta Botánica Mexicana), remains to this day the foundational reference cited by nearly every subsequent study on Michoacán fungi — almost four decades later. She also wrote two books that united science and community knowledge: one on the edible and poisonous mushrooms of the Lake Pátzcuaro basin, Purépecha territory, and another on the mushrooms of the Sierra Chincua, heart of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve — two of Michoacán's most cherished natural treasures, documented by the same hand. She continued giving lectures and supporting scientific mycology outreach exhibitions until at least 2019.