This website is an entirely personal photographic archive of Dr Nandkumar M. Kamat, independent researcher, Mapusa,Goa, India, built over decades of sustained fieldwork, laboratory research, and taxonomic investigation mainly into the actinobacteial, unicellular yeast, mycelial fungal and Myxomycete diversity of Goa and the Western Ghats. Every image here (and the aim is to have 50000 to one lakh images) — field photographs, laboratory photographs, colony photographs of pure cultures , photomicrographs, and electron micrographs — originates exclusively from my own research or from work carried out by my PGDEPCT, MSc and PhD students and research fellows under my direct supervision at ISOHE, Govt of Goa (1993-2001) and Goa University (1996-2022). A distinct segment of mushroom and Myxomycete photographs contributed by members of the Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) who collaborated in community-based biodiversity surveys is separately acknowledged where applicable. This is not a collaborative institutional database. Every specimen, every slide, every print, every micrograph in this archive was personally collected, processed, prepared, or directed by me. Its is an intellectual effort, the 40 years of patient observation across ecosystems, the meticulous documentation from spore to sporocarp which is showcased here. The images are protected. They can be viewed and referenced but cannot be downloaded or reproduced. The purpose of making this archive accessible is strictly scientific reference — so that any researcher working on microbial diversity in Goa, and particularly on Iron and Sulphur bacteria, Actinobacteria, unicellular yeasts, micro or macrofungi, wild mushrooms and Myxomycetes, is aware of the scale and depth of documentation already existing for these groups. Reinvention of what is already recorded serves no one. This archive is a signpost, not an open repository. Its to alert people who make false claim of discovering some species for the first time due to ignorance of this work. The checklists based on published information will also show them the contributions from Portuguese period to microbial diversity of Goa.
It would be a historical injustice not to acknowledge that serious mycological work in Goa did not begin in 1961 or even with modern Indian mycology. Dr. Indalêncio Froilano De Mello (1887–1955), working at the Old Goa Medical College during the Portuguese colonial period, laid the earliest foundation of mycological knowledge in this region. His contributions to medical mycology — covering dermatophytes, aspergilli, yeasts, blastomycetes, scopulariosis, and pathogenic yeasts including what was later confirmed as Cryptococcus neoformans — predated and in many respects paralleled the work of his contemporaries in British India. Dr. E.J. Butler, addressing the Second Conference on Mycology at Pusa, explicitly recognized De Mello as the leading authority on medical mycology on the Indian continent. That foundation, however overlooked by mainstream Indian mycology, is the true starting point of any serious account of fungal knowledge in Goa.

The present archive builds on that legacy — not in medical mycology but in the actinobacteial, macrofungal and Myxomycete diversity of Goa’s forests, grasslands, lateritic plateaus, and associated habitats. Over 800 species of mushrooms have been surveyed, documented, and photographed. Dozens of novel taxa have been identified. The Myxomycete records from Goa represented here are among the very few systematic photographic documentations from the Western Ghats. Supporting resources — checklists, monographs, and taxonomic keys — are separately available in the Resources section for reading and referencing only and this section would expand with time.

This archive exists because the work was done. It is presented here so it is known that it was done and time stamped here permanently.