Field Mycology & Conservation Committee

Marcus Yeo

Chair, Field Mycology & Conservation Committee

Until his retirement in 2021, Marcus Yeo spent his career working for government agencies as a nature conservationist. He has had an interest in higher plants and bryophytes since he was a teenager and has undertaken field recording in many parts of the UK. More recently his interests have expanded to include fungi, with a focus on ascomycetes.

Caroline Hobart

Caroline (Carol) Hobart began looking at mushrooms and toadstools in the mid 1980s attending an extra mural course at the University of Sheffield. As a former lecturer in Art and Design she believes that observation and enquiry are core skills needed for the study of natural history. Carol's professional background in art education and teaching at the university have been instrumental in her contribution to the BMS: Carol has been on and off BMS council for 20 years. Her mycological interests lie underground: she is presently working on distribution and taxonomy of the genus Hymenogaster.

Chris Knowles

Chris has been working in field mycology for over 10 years, and has a been an independent mycological consultant since 2015. He is an active member in the running of his local Scottish fungus recording group, which puts a lot of effort into improving the field and microscopy skills of new members. To further increase people's understanding of fungi and to develop their identification skills, Chris regularly teaches courses and workshops for a variety of conservation and educational organisations.

Visit Chris's website

Clare Blencowe

Clare Blencowe is an amateur mycologist whose work occasionally overlaps with her hobby. In 2015 she took on the role of Manager at the Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre, working closely with the volunteer biological recording community to provide ecological data and information services to a wide range of data users. Clare is an active member of the West Weald Fungus Recording Group and Sussex Fungus Group. In recent years she has been developing a particular interest in identification, recording and conservation of grassland fungi.

Visit Clare’s blog

David Satori

David has an interest in habitat management for important fungal communities and the role of fungi as bioindicators of ecological recovery. Since training at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - which equipped him with with a MSc degree in Plant and Fungal Taxonomy, Diversity and Conservation - David has been working with a variety of clients offering biodiversity surveys, monitoring, and consultation for nature recovery projects across the UK. He is a contributing author of the Routledge Handbook of Rewilding (2022) in which he co-authored the chapter ‘Unseen connections: the role of fungi in rewilding’.

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Helen Baker

Helen is an amateur mycologist and a committee member of the Grampian Fungus Group. Prior to moving to Scotland, she was based in Cambridgeshire and a member of the Huntingdon Fungus Group for many years. Her main interests are Russula, and birch woodland and aquatic fungi, and she leads on fungal sequencing for Grampian Fungus Group.

Lee Davies

Lee is the Collection Manger of the Fungarium at RBG Kew, managing the curation team to accession new material into the collections and facilitate access to the collection by researchers worldwide. His background is in palaeontology, and he has found himself a mycologist by accident. He has participated in fieldwork all over the world and annually travels in Madagascar teaching on Kew’s MSc programme.

Stuart Skeates

Stuart developed an interest in the natural world in his junior school which led to him spending his spare time in the Natural History Museum corridors and lecture theatre or at the London zoo and its XYZ club (eXceptional Young Zoologist). Stuart studied Mathematics at Cambridge University, and later  qualified as a doctor and GP.  During this time he developed an interest in fungi and was group leader for Hampshire Fungus Recording Group for 20 years, developing their recording database and website. In retirement Stuart has been involved in BMS committees and activities, particularly the Fungal Records Database of Britain and Ireland (FRDBI), which he now manages.