The trade of totoaba has all the intrigue of a crime thriller. Dollars and drugs change hands as a criminal cartel vies against the government. Communities and endangered species are caught in the crosshairs of a lucrative illicit trade. It may then come as a surprise that the totoaba is a fish.

Forming sustainable research partnerships with Indigenous peoples requires trust and mutual benefit, say microbiome researchers in an opinion paper publishing October 8 in the Cell Press journal Trends in Microbiology. The paper presents a framework for building this type of relationship based on insights from the team’s 15-year-long collaboration with the Matsés, a group of people who live in the Amazon rainforest on the border of Peru and Brazil. To build trust, the researchers worked in collaboration with the Matsés through all stages of the research project, from developing research methods to disseminating results.