Life, death and zombie mushrooms: in search of the Amazon’s rarest fungi

Mycologists Alan Rockefeller and Mandie Quark are on a mission to meticulously document species in Ecuador's jungle - before they vanish

Words and photographs by Rachel Bujalski

Twilight is falling in the Ecuadorian jungle when the two scientists spot their first zombie. The smell of damp earth and vegetation rises as Alan Rockefeller takes slow, careful steps, scanning the forest floor with an ultraviolet light.

Suddenly, a fragment of undergrowth glows: strands of luminous cordyceps, turned fluorescent by the torch. Dubbed the zombie fungus", cordyceps is known for colonising its insect hosts compelling them to seek a suitable spot to release spores. That is the spot where the host will die.

Clockwise from top left: the team find a Cordyceps nidus, a species found in 2017 that fruits on a trapdoor spider; Rockefeller illuminates a Cookeina speciosa; next, he holds up a stick on which Schizophyllum commune grow, a common mushroom that glows in UV light; Rockefeller and Quark show four monkey combs