by Solomon P. Wasser
Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology and Institute of Evolution, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Haifa, 199 Aba Khoushy Ave., Mount Carmel, Haifa, 3498838, Israel, spwasser@research.haifa.ac.il
On January 12, 2016, Professor Gastón Guzmán has passed away… One can say without a doubt that Latin America has lost its greatest mycologist.
I personally knew Professor Guzmán for many years. He was truly a great man admired by all who came to know him. I had just met with him last August at the 8th IMMC in Manizales, where I had a pleasure to congratulate him with his birthday. Professor Guzmán was an outstanding scientific specialist in various aspects of mycology, including taxonomy, biodiversity, ecology, geography, ethnomycology, medicinal value of mushrooms, and he was respected worldwide.
Gastón Guzmán was born on August 26, 1932, in the city of Xalapa, Mexico. In 1951, he started his studies in biology at the National School of Biological Sciences, National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City. His interest in mycology began in 1955, as a graduate student, he decided to update the poorly maintained collection of fungi of the National Polytechnic Institute. During his first field work in the forests near Mexico City he found a myriad of species about which little was known at the time. This inspired him to declare mushrooms as the topic of his thesis and vowed to someday write a book on Mexican mushrooms.
In 2012, on his 80th jubilee an article devoted to G. Guzmán was published (International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, 2012, 14 (5):529-534), where the list of publications from 2006 to 2012 was presented. Thus, here we include only publications of G. Guzmán after 2012.
In 1956, Guzmán met Dr. T. Herrera of the Institute of Biology of the National University of Mexico, the only mycologist at that time specializing in the macromycetes of Mexico. He formed a fruitful friendship with Dr. Herrera, which resulted in getting the field of mycology in Mexico up and running. In 1968, they founded the Mexican Society of Mycology, with Guzmán as Editor of the Society’s bulletin, and later, the Society’s journal for 20 years.
In 1957, after reading R. Gordon Wasson's article "Seeking the Magic Mushroom", Gastón Guzmán was invited to go on an expedition to study neurotropic fungi in the Huautla de Jimenez region, as an assistant to the most famous agaricologist of the second half of the 20th century – Professor Rolf Singer (USA). As Guzmán has rightly said, Professor R. Singer was his first teacher of mycology, especially when it comes to Agaricales s.l. On the last day of the expedition he met R. Gordon Wasson (USA), a world leader in the study of ethnomycology. This chance meeting resulted in a close friendship between the two men which lasted for over 30 years. Also, years later in that time, Guzmán met Professor Roger Heim from Paris, who was in Mexico with Wasson and Herrera studying the neurotropic fungi.
After accompanying Singer in his trips, Guzmán continued to explore the southeastern and central regions of the country on his own, collecting and studying hallucinogenic fungi, especially species of the genus Psilocybe, and collecting new ethnomycological data. In 1958, he published his first article on the ecology of Psilocybe – the genus previously studied separately by Heim and Singer, and known under two different names. A year later, Guzmán published the first synopsis on the hallucinogenic fungi of Mexico with Singer and Heim.
In 1958, through his Indian contacts, Prof. Guzmán learned about the Aztec word “teotlaquilnanacatl” (which means sacred mushroom), used by indigenous people to describe the hallucinogenic species of Psilocybe, rather than the word “teonanácatl” often cited in the literature (first by Schultes, in 1939).
In 1959, Guzmán presented his thesis on the taxonomy and ecology of Mexican hallucinogenic mushrooms, and was awarded an Honorable Mention. Prof. Guzmán dedicated his thesis to his teacher Rolf Singer, as well as to Wasson, Heim, Schultes, and Teofilo Herrera, all of whom had helped him in conducting his research. He continued with his studies at the National Polytechnic Institute (1963-1968) pursuing a Doctor of Science degree, and spent some of that period, in 1965, studying under the supervision of Dr. Alexander H. Smith at the University of Michigan (USA). In 1967, he presented his doctoral dissertation: “A monograph of species of the genus Scleroderma on the American continent”. This was later published in Argentina in 1970, as a world monograph on the named genus.
In 1970, Guzmán was awarded a scholarship by the Guggenheim Foundation of New York to carry out a worldwide study of the genus Psilocybe, with the goal of identifying hallucinogenic species and determining their distribution. Before this, in 1969, in Seattle, in a piano-bar Guzmán met Dr. Richard Evan Schultes, with whom he previously had only correspondence. Later, Schultes would send Guzmán information from the Guggenheim Foundation to apply for a scholarship, and it was with this scholarship that Guzmán carried out his research in South America, USA, Europe, and Japan. This allowed him to publish a world monograph on the genus Psilocybe in 1983. In 1995, he published a supplement to that monograph (Guzmán 1995), and he was preparing the second edition of the monograph.
Among Guzmán’s main contributions to mycology in Latin America, are his tireless work, exploration, and establishing collections of fungi. Professor Guzmán was the one who organized the first mushrooms fair in Mexico in 1977, later he organized more than 100 mushroom fairs in the country, as well as in Guatemala, Panama, and Colombia. As it was said above, in 1955, he founded the Mushroom Collection of the National School of Biological Sciences (ENCB), which exceeds 120.000 specimens and is currently the largest in Mexico. In 1982, he was invited to work at the National Institute for Research on Biotic Resources in Xalapa, Veracuz, where he initiated what is now the second largest collection of fungi in Mexico. This collection (XAL) is currently under stewardship of the Institute of Ecology, A.C., and houses more than 55,000 specimens. Guzmán has contributed to the different mushroom collections maintained by institutions in Mexico and Latin America, as well as to the training of their collectors and curators. Guzmán’s passion for field work has led him to collect and record more than 39,000 mushroom specimens from all over the world, and these are deposited in ENCB and XAL with duplicates in IBUG and MEXU, as well as other herbaria in the USA and Europe. Prof. Guzmán was a consummate teacher and has always been concerned about training young people with strict scientific rigor and an enormous sense of discipline. Throughout his professional life, he has set up and encouraged many research teams in Mexico. He has supervised more than 200 theses dealing with different aspects of mycology. Mexican mycologists, such as Nahara Ayala, Victor Bandala, Santiago Chacón, Joaquín Cifuentes, Alonso Cortés-Pérez, Laura Guzmán-Dávalos, José Marmolejo, Daniel Martínez-Carrera, Gerardo Mata, Rosario Medel, Leticia Montoya, Florencia Ramírez-Guillén, Dulce Salmones, Ricardo Valenzuela, and Luis Villarreal, among others, have been Guzmán’s students, and although his influence in different national and international institutions has been significant, the research team that best demonstrated his leadership in the field of mycology was the group he brought together in Xalapa, where he was living and working.
In 1990, on the initiative of Guzmán, the Latin America Association of Mycology was founded in Havana, Cuba. Since its creation, this organization has played a very important role in the field. There have been two conferences in Havana (1993 and 1996) and one in Caracas (1999). In 2002, with Guzmán as the president in turn, the fourth conference was held in Xalapa, later, the Fifth Latin American Mycology Conference was held in Brasilia (Brasil), in 2008, the conference took place in Argentina, and the last time it was held in Costa Rica.
Prof. Guzmán was an Honorary Member of the Mexican Society of Mycology, the Botany Society of Mexico, the Latin American Association of Mycology, the Academy of Sciences of Colombia, Baracaldo Mycological Society (Spain), and the Mycological Society of America.
In 2002, the National University of Mexico (UNAM) carried out a study (Michan-Aguirre and Llorente, 2003) to determine which Mexican scientist had published most widely in taxonomy during the 20th century. Guzmán came in second, after one zoology professor, indicating that in the last century he was the most important taxonomist in mycology in Mexico. Throughout his extensive career, from 1958 to 2016, Guzmán has published more than 400 scientific articles, 16 books, and more than 30 book chapters. Among his most important works, in addition to the book on Psilocybe, were its supplement, the monograph on Scleroderma, and "The Identification of Mushrooms", which was published in 1977. This book was the first to be published in Mexico on macroscopic fungi and continues to be used as a basic text wherever mycology is taught in Mexico. It is also a reference work for Latin American mycologists. Another important book, The Cultivation of Edible Mushrooms", was published in collaboration with several of his students. This was a pioneering effort in Mexico and was very well accepted. Also noteworthy is the book "The Name of Mushrooms and Related Things in Latin America", which has been internationally acclaimed as an encyclopedia of mushrooms. Guzmán has described more than 200 new taxa (genera and species) for Mexico and other parts of the world. This enormous diversity both in the fields of his studies and in the groups of mushrooms he was investigating resulted in the fact that his publications were cited more than 3,000 times in books and journals all over the world. More than half of the known species belonging to the genus Psilocybe were described by Guzmán.
Guzmán has been one of the members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms for 17 years, right from its onset in 1999. He was a very diligent and creative reviewer, and the author of many very important papers. He took part in all of the International Medicinal Mushrooms Conferences, since the first one held in 2001 in Kiev (Ukraine).
A cofounder and former president of the Mexican Mycological Society, he has also been president of the Latin American Mycological Association (2000–2002), and was a founding member of the Panamanian Mycological Society. In last years, Prof. Guzmán held an emeritus research chair at the Ecological Institute of Xalapa, where he founded the Department and Herbarium of Fungi. Professor Guzmán has organized interesting scientific lectures and mycological expositions, he was engaged in teaching, prepared articles and books not only in Mexico, but also outside the country. He was also a guide on "Mexican Mushroom Tours”.
In 2001, Guzmán went to a meeting in Nepal, where he explored part of the country collecting interesting mushrooms, publishing in 2010 an article with his student F. Ramírez-Guillén. In 2010, Guzmán explored the surrounding area of the Research Center of Fungi in Thailand, where he found five new species of the genus Psilocybe (Mycotaxon 119: 65-81, 2012) and several over interesting mushrooms. Moreover, he also held lectures and presentations in Nepal, Thailand and in Malaysia.
The diversity of Professor Guzmán’s research programs, his scientific, organizational, and pedagogical activities, along with his significant achievements in fungal taxonomy and other fields of mycology, represented him as a scientist of many interests, a brilliant science organizer, and a world scientific leader of the School of Mushroom Biology, whose achievements and accomplishments became incorporated into the world of science.
Professor G. Guzmán was an extraordinary, vibrant man in the broadest sense of the world. Apart from his scientific activities, Guzmán also enjoyed the romantic music, the bohemia, the poetry; he even wrote poems related to the love, life and women. He was married twice, and has three daughters from his first matrimony, among them Laura Guzmán-Dávalos, an outstanding mycologist of the University of Guadalajara in Mexico.
Guzmán attracted people like a magnet, because of his charm, wit, and erudition. From the first encounter with him, you sensed the warmth of his personality and his outgoing, unconventional nature. Guzmán was not only a creative and gifted scientist, but also an intellectual with a broad education. In 2012, he celebrated his 80th birthday at the peak of his creative activity.
One of his last articles, entitled: "New Studies on Hallucinogenic Mushrooms: History, Diversity, and Applications in Psychiatry" was published in issue No. 11 of International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms (Guzmán, 2015).
For his knowledge, professionalism, dedication, diligence, and warm personality, colleagues and friends of Professor Guzmán will certainly agree with me that he will be dearly missed.
List of publications of Gastón Guzmán 2012-2016
Articles
Guzmán G. 2012. New taxonomical and ethnomycological observations on Psilocybe s.s. (Fungi, Basidiomycota, Agaricomycetidae, Agaricales, Strophariaceae) from Mexico, Africa and Spain. Acta Botánica Mexicana 100: 81-108.
Ramírez Cruz V., Guzmán G. & Guzmán Dávalos L. 2012. New combinations in the genus Deconica (Fungi, Basidiomycota, Agaricales). Sydowia 64: 217-219.
Camacho-Sánchez M., Guzmán G. & Guzmán Dávalos L. 2012. Pleurotus opuntiae (Durieu et Lév.) Sacc. (Higher Basidiomycetes) and other species related to Agave and Opuntia plants in Mexico — Taxonomy, distribution, and applications. International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms 14: 65-78.
Guzmán G., Ramírez Guillén F., Hyde K.D. & Karunarathna S.C. 2012. Psilocybe s.s. in Thailand: four new species and a review of previously recorded species. Mycotaxon 119: 65-81.
Guzmán G. & Guzmán Dávalos L. 2013. La maestra Luz María Villarreal de Puga y la Micología de Jalisco, México. Ibugana 4: 89-95.
Guzmán G., Cortés Pérez J.A. & Ramírez Guillén F. 2013. The Japanese Hallucinogenic Mushrooms Psilocybe and a New Synonym of P. subcaerulipes with Three Asiatic Species Belong to Section Zapotecorum (Higher Basidiomycetes). International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms 15: 607-615.
Ramírez-Cruz V., Guzmán G. & Guzmán-Dávalos L. 2013. Type studies of Psilocybe sensu lato (Strophariaceae, Agaricales). Sydowia 65: 277-319.
Guzmán G., Cortés Pérez J.A., Guzmán Dávalos L., Ramírez Guillén F. & Sánchez-Jácome M.D.R. 2013. An emendation of Scleroderma, new records, and review of the known species in Mexico. Revista Mexicana de Biodiversidad. 84 (Supl): 173-191.
Ramírez Cruz V., Guzmán G., Villalobos-Arámbula A.R., Rodríguez A., Matheny P.B. & Sánchez-García M. 2013. Phylogenetic inference and trait evolution of the psychedelic mushroom genus Psilocybe sensu lato (Agaricales). Botany 91: 573-591.
Santos da Silva P., Ramírez-Cruz V., Cortés-Pérez J.A., Guzmán G., Guzmán Dávalos L. & Borges da Silveira R.M. 2013. Deconica neorhombispora (Agaricales, Strophariaceae): new combination and synonym. Sydowia 65: 321-328.
Gándara E., Guzmán-Dávalos L., Guzmán G. & Rodríguez O. 2014. Inventario Micobiótico de la región de Tapalpa, Jalisco, México. Acta Botánica Mexicana 107: 165-185.
Guzmán G. 2014. Análisis del conocimiento de los hongos sagrados entre los mazatecos después de 54 a?os. Etnoecológica 10: 1-16.
Cortés-Pérez, A., Guzmán G. & Ramírez-Guillén F. 2014. Squamanita umbonata (Fungi, Agaricales, Tricholomataceae), primer registro en México. Acta Botánica Mexicana 108: 105-111.
Guzmán G., Nixon S.C., Ramírez-Guillén F. & Cortés-Pérez A. 2014. Psilocybe s. str. (Agaricales, Strophariaceae) in Africa description of a new species from the Congo. Sydowia 66: 43-53.
Cortés Pérez J.A., Ramírez Guillén F. & Guzmán G. 2015. Nuevos registros de Mycena Sección Sacchariferae (Basidiomycota) para México. Revista Mexicana de Micología 41: 77-85.
Pérez-Pérez R.E. & Guzmán G. 2015. Parmotrema species in a cloud forests region turned into an urban zone in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico. Bosque 36 (3): 357-362. DOI: 10.4067/S0717-92002015000300003
Trejo Aguilar D., Guzmán G., Lara L., Zulueta R.R., Palenzuela J., Sánchez-Castro I., Alves da Silva G., Sieverding E. & Oehl F. 2015. Morphology and phylogeny of Acaulospora foveata (Glomeromycetes) from Mexico. Sydowia 67: 119-126. DOI: 10.12905/0380.sydowia67-2015-0119
Guzmán G. 2015. New Studies on Hallucinogenic Mushrooms: History, Diversity, and Applications in Psychiatry. International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms 17 (11): 1019-1029.
Guzmán G. 2016. Las relaciones de los hongos sagrados con el hombre a través del tiempo. Anales de Antropología 50: 134-147.
Sommerkamp Y, Paz AM, & Guzmán G. Medicinal mushrooms in Guatemala. International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms 18 (1):56-64.
Books
Guzmán G. 2013. Devastación de los bosques y selvas en México. La urgencia de su conservación. INECOL. Xalapa.
Book chapters
Guzmán G. 2012. Los hongos alucinógenos y su acción sobre el sistema nervioso central. In: Méndez-Tovar, L.J., R. López-Martínez & F. Hernández-Hernández (Eds.). Actualidades en Micología Médica. Sefirot, S.A. de C.V. y UNAM. Pp. 256-260.
Guzmán G. 2013. Sacred Mushrooms and Man: Diversity and Traditions in the World, with Special Reference to Psilocybe. In: Rush J.A. (Ed.). Entheogens and the Development of Culture. North Atlantic Books. Pp. 485-518.
Guzmán G. 2014. El uso tradicional de los hongos sagrados: pasado y presente. In: Moreno Fuentes, A. & R. Garibay Orijel (Eds.). La Etnomicología en México. Estado del Arte. Red de Etnoecología y Patrimonio Biocultural (CONACyT), Universidad Autónoma de Estado de Hidalgo, Instituto de Biología (UNAM), Sociedad Mexicana de Micología, Asociación Etnobiológica Mexicana, A.C. Pp. 61-88.
Guzmán G. 2015. La micología médica en las culturas indígenas pre- y post la conquista. In: R. López-Martínez (Ed.). Historia de la Micología Médica en México. Academia Mexicana de Dermatología, A.C. Pp. 17-35.
Fig. Professor G. Guzman on 8 International medicinal Mushrooms Conference (Manizales, Colombia, August, 2015).
*In 2006, a special issue dedicated to G. Guzmán 50 years of mycological studies was published (International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, 2006, 6 (3):201-213), it included his list of publications.