Given to the great diversity of habitat and the resulting diversity of fungi present in Costa Rica, INBio entered the field of mycology in 1996 with its inventory of the nation’s fungi.

A sampling protocol has been defined for the development of this research, which involves the combined work of “parataxonomists”, technicians and curators from INBio, as well as international taxonomists. In addition to learning about the species present in the country, these teams carry out ecological studies related to the abundance, seasonality and diversity of species in the different conservation areas, and provide the information to users in various formats.

The unit collects, processes and maintains a collection of fungi from Costa Rica, which constitutes a valuable source of information for a variety of studies in systematics, ecology, physiology, genetics and conservation. It is also a reference source for efforts aimed at monitoring the effect of environmental changes caused by global warming, pollution, forest fragmentation and other environmental upheavals.