Gastón Guzmán, 26 August 1932–12 January 2016

Gastón Guzmán (FIG. 1A–H) was a memorable person with a great personality, charisma, and strength of character. He was a cherished father, remarkable teacher, outstanding scientist, and superior mycologist. He died at age 83, working nearly until his death, remaining more active than many much younger mycologists.

Figure 1. A. Mexican mycologists Rubén López, Gastón Guzmán, and Joaquín Cifuentes (left to right) at the XI Mexican Mycological Congress, Mérida, Yucatán, October 2015 (photo Rosalba Vázquez). B–H. Gastón Guzmán. B. At Rancho del Cura, near Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca, taking notes on hallucinogenic mushrooms, August 2013 (photo Eduardo Fanti). C–D. In Mismaloya, Jalisco, July 2012 (photos Gabriela Guzmán). E. At the IX Mexican Mycological Congress after the opening ceremony near the beach, Ensenada, Baja California, October 2006 (photo Fortunato Garza). F. With his mother, Concepción Huerta, the day he received his bachelor’s degree in 1959 (photo anonymous). G. Showing mushrooms to children in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, July 2012 (photo Gabriela Guzmán). H. With his daughter Laura Guzmán-Dávalos at the IX Mexican Mycological Congress, Ensenada, Baja California, October 2006 (photo Fortunato Garza).

Guzmán was born in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, although his family lived in Tampico, Tamaulipas, at the time. He was the third of four children, three brothers and one sister, born to his parents, Luis P. Guzmán and Concepción Huerta. When he was 2 years old, an unprecedented flood inundated Tampico. Because of the unhealthy conditions, he became very ill and the entire family moved to Mexico City, where medical care was better. There he completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies. Guzmán began research as a biologist in 1953, when he was a third-year student at the university. He searched for yams (Dioscorea spp.) in the southeastern rainforests of Mexico for the pharmaceutical company Syntex and from Guatemala to Nicaragua for Pfizer in 1954. He then collected hallucinogenic mushrooms for the Swiss pharmaceutical company Geigy from 1956 to 1957. He attended the Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Biológicas (ENCB) of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, obtaining his bachelor’s degree in biology with honors in 1959. His thesis was on the genus Psilocybe, which had been discovered as a hallucinogenic mushroom only recently. He met Rolf Singer in 1957 and worked for him during a field expedition to the Mazatec region, searching for hallucinogenic mushrooms. As Guzmán often proudly recounted, Singer was the advisor who encouraged him to pursue a career as a mycologist. In 1965, he spent a few months at the University of Michigan, funded by grants from ENCB, the Organization of American States, and the University of Michigan. He received his doctoral degree from ENCB (1967) by the direct option (involving more years of study without acquiring a master’s degree). His dissertation was a monograph on the “earthball” genus Scleroderma, directed by Alexander H. Smith from the University of Michigan and Jerzy Rzedowski, a prominent Mexican botanist from ENCB.

In 1956, he was hired by ENCB as a laboratory assistant and kept working while he completed his studies. From 1958, he worked as a teacher and researcher in the same institution, until he moved to the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones sobre Recursos Bióticos (INIREB) at Xalapa in 1982. From 1988 until his death, he devoted his life to the study of fungi, working at the Instituto de Ecología (INECOL), first in Mexico City and later in Xalapa.

In addition to research, Guzmán was concerned with the training of future mycologists and public outreach, establishing collections, and acquiring literature. He invested substantial effort to disseminate information related to fungi, whether by delivering keynote speeches or general talks or by organizing or participating in almost 100 mushroom exhibitions throughout Mexico and Latin America. These exhibitions, in addition to educating the general public, were important for training new mycologists, and he shaped the careers of more than 25 mushroom specialists in Mexico, Guatemala, and Panama.

In 1956, Guzmán met Dr. Teófilo Herrera from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM), then the only mycologist in Mexico. In 1961, they published together the first illustrated catalog of edible Mexican mushrooms with black and white photographs, which remains an essential reference. They founded the Mexican Mycological Society (SMM) in 1965, and later, in 1990, Guzmán founded the Latin American Mycological Association in Havana, Cuba. He was the editor of the SMM journal, Revista Mexicana de Micología, now Scientia Fungorum, for 20 years.

With support from Richard Evans Schultes, Guzmán was awarded a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1971 to prepare a world monograph of Psilocybe, which was published in 1983 with a supplement in 1995. The monograph established Guzmán as the world’s expert on the genus, a subject about which he produced a large number of papers. Before his death, he was working on a second edition of the Psilocybe monograph that will eventually be published in parts; his former students and coauthors are now working to complete the proposed first part, Psilocybe section Zapotecorum, although no publication date has been fixed.

Although he specialized in Psilocybe, Guzmán studied many other groups of macroscopic fungi and published important works on other Agaricales, including species of Amanita, Asproinocybe, Deconica, Hypholoma, Lentinula, Panaeolus, Pleurotus, Psathyrella, Rugosospora, Tricholosporum, and Tulostoma, as well as Cantharellales, the bolete Scleroderma, and the ascomycetous fungi Morchella. He also collaborated with students and colleagues on other fungi, including Cordyceps, Geoglossaceae, Gymnopilus, Lactarius, Lepiotaceae, Pezizales, Phaeocollybia, Tremellales, Volvariella, and Xylariales. He supervised more than 100 theses of bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree students.

Because they were so poorly studied, Guzmán took a special interest in tropical mushrooms, and he published papers on mushrooms of the Yucatan Peninsula, a book on the mushrooms from a reserve in Quintana Roo, and with Meike Piepenbring, a book on mushrooms of Panama. His book Identificación de los Hongos, Comestibles, Venenosos, Alucinantes y Destructores de la Madera (1977) was the first of its kind in Latin America and became a keystone in the development of Mexican mycology. It enabled identifications using only macromorphological characters and motivated some students to search for more information and to become mycologists. Guzmán’s influence extended to wherever this book was used. Although reprinted several times, it has been out of print for a long time.

Early in his career, Guzmán realized the importance of fungal herbaria. As soon as he began his research, he initiated a mushroom collection at ENCB, currently the largest collection in Mexico with more than 120 000 specimens. He also had important roles in establishing herbaria at INIREB (now INECOL), Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Universidad Veracruzana, Universidad Autónoma de Morelos, and Universidad de San Carlos in Guatemala and helped to develop the FCME and IBUG herbaria.

The importance of mycological literature was critical, especially before Internet resources were available, and Guzmán built his mycological library using personal resources to develop and maintain the largest private mycological library in Mexico. He made it available for consultation, and it was a critical resource for many publications by his research group and others.

Guzmán’s interest in mushroom traditions led him to initiate ethnomycological research in Mexico. In addition to hallucinogenic mushrooms, he collaborated in a study of the uses of fungi by the Purépechas, indigenous people living in the state of Michoacán; the work is considered fundamental to Mexican ethnomycology. Another book, Los nombres de los hongos y lo relacionado con ellos en América Latina (1997), on the ethnic names of the fungi, is an important compilation of Mexican ethnomycological knowledge. His pioneering interest in research on mushroom cultivation in Mexico in the 1980s led to the book El Cultivo de los Hongos Comestibles (1993), published with some of his former students, the “bedside book” for anyone interested in mushroom cultivation in Mexico and other Latin American countries.

During his long, productive life, Guzmán published more than 400 scientific and popular papers and over 20 books or book chapters, collected and deposited 41115 mushroom specimens in ENCB, XAL, and IBUG herbaria, and described more than 300 new species from Mexico, Central and South America, USA, Canada, Europe, Japan, Nepal, Thailand, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, Australia, and New Zealand. His trail-blazing work raised the profile of mycology throughout Latin America and beyond. Some of the fungi he studied attracted the attention of amateur mushroom enthusiasts and a few professional mycologists who made these works the subject of many popular Web sites. Guzmán was elected an Honorary Member of the Mycological Society of America in 1987 in recognition of his many achievements.

Guzmán was married twice; he and Laura Dávalos Sánchez were married in Mexico City in 1960, and they had four children, Laura, Gastón (who died at age 15 in an accident), Gabriela, and Verónica. Guzmán later married Isabel Lasserre Bonilla in Xalapa in 1995. He died of pneumonia caused by Aspergillus, an irony that a fungus should finish his life. It is reassuring that his mycological tradition continues not only through his students but also in his own family with his mycologist daughter, Laura. He left his mark on all who knew him, and we remember his free spirit, his passion for disseminating mycological knowledge, and encouragement in the development of mycological centers with great affection and respect. Now, in a paradise filled with fungi, we hope he rests, perhaps in the embrace of Teonanácatl (FIG. 1).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We gratefully acknowledge comments from the messages of condolence received by Laura Guzmán-Dávalos from Ruth De León, David Hawksworth, Bob Voeks, Roy Watling, Patricia Fajardo, and others, some of which are included in this memorial. We thank the reviewers, Meredith Blackwell and Keith Seifert, for corrections and improving the English.