Background
Jose Maria Gallegos was a research associate of the National Museum of Mexico. The 1923 bi-national survey of northern Baja
California's Sierra San Pedro Mártir (June, 1923) and Guadalupe Island (July 10-22, 1923) was organized by the Society of
Biological Studies (Mexico). Expedition members included José Maria Gallegos, National Museum of Mexico; Laurence M. Huey,
Curator of Birds and Mammals, San Diego Natural History Museum; herpetologists John Van Denburgh and Joseph R. Slevin of the
California Academy of Sciences, and ornithologist Alfred W. Anthony. From 1922 to 1924, Gallegos facilitated Mexican government
agreements for bi-national biological surveys and specimen collecting in Baja California, the Los Coronados Islands, and Guadalupe
Island and worked with United States naturalists including San Diego Natural History Museum Director Clinton G. Abbott, Dr.
Harry Wegeworth at the San Diego Zoological Society, Carroll de Wilton Scott, San Diego Natural History Museum, Ralph Hoffman,
Director of the the Natural History Museum, Santa Barbara, California, and Pasadena ornithologist Adriaan Joseph van Rossem.
While working in Payo Obispo in southern Mexico, he contracted malaria and died in September 1925.