Alan W. Archer is a mycologist and taxonomist. He is currently an honorary research associate at Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney. He uses chemotaxonomy as well as morphological features in taxonomy and to devise keys, most recently for the genus Pertusaria in the Australasia region.
During his career he has characterised and revised over 100 fungal taxa. He is an authority on the family Graphidaceae from the Australia - Pacific region and characterised Carbacanthographis salazinica and Phaeographis salazinica. He was also the first to characterise several members of the genus Pertusaria, Pertusaria ambigua Pertusaria epacrospora, Pertusaria guineabissauensis, Pertusaria salazinica, Pertusaria sipmanii and. An advanced search of the Mycobank database shows that he has authored some 101 fungi taxa, including Pertusaria xylophyes.
The standard author abbreviation A.W.Archer is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.