Emerging fungal threats to animal, plant and ecosystem health

By Matthew Fisher, Daniel A Henk, Cheryl J. Briggs, John S. Brownstein, L. Madoff, S. McCraw, Sarah J. Gurr. Nature, 2012

2,985 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The past two decades have seen an increasing number of virulent infectious diseases in natural populations and managed landscapes. In both animals and plants, an unprecedented number of fungal and fungal-like diseases have recently caused some of the most severe die-offs and extinctions ever witnessed in wild species, and are jeopardizing food security. Human activity is intensifying fungal disease dispersal by modifying natural environments and thus creating new opportunities for evolution. We argue that nascent fungal infections will cause increasing attrition of biodiversity, with wider implications for human and ecosystem health, unless steps are taken to tighten biosecurity worldwide.

Subfields: Cell Biology, Ecological Modeling, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f2191564b2a223f5a33f80d2b7de91d86b9142ad

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cell Biology

In Ecological Modeling

In Plant Science

Citations in the corpus

Emerging microbial biocontrol strategies for plant pathogens. (2018, neutral): “Most alarming is the unprecedented recent trend of new fungal and fungal-like plant pathogen alerts that have increased by more than 7-fold since 2000 [16].”
One stop shop: backbones trees for important phytopathogenic genera: I (2014) (2014, background): “As plant parasites, fungi can cause significant economic loss with far-reaching social implications and consequences in agriculture, forestry and natural ecosystems (Fisher et al. 2012).”
Considerations for restoring temperate forests of tomorrow: forest restoration, assisted migration, and bioengineering (2015, background): “Worldwide, the number of such introductions is expected to climb (Fisher et al. 2012).”
No rest for the laurels: symbiotic invaders cause unprecedented damage to southern USA forests (2017, background): “…hypothesized to increase invasiveness in certain taxa, such as water fleas and aquatic plants (Roman and Darling 2007) because it eliminates the ‘twofold cost of sex’ and Allee effects such as inbreeding depression and matefinding (Roman and Darling 2007; Fisher et al. 2012; Engering et al. 2013).”
Portraying mechanics of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR): A review (2016, background): “These diseases decrease the annual agriculture yield by at least 30% globally (Fisher et al., 2012).”
Patterns, Causes, and Consequences of Anthropocene Defaunation (2016, background): “A suite of fungal pathogens has recently caused globalor continental-scale epidemic declines in frogs and bats, and now an emerging pathogen threatens salamanders (Fisher et al. 2012).”
White-nose syndrome is likely to extirpate the endangered Indiana bat over large parts of its range (2013, background): “Fungal diseases pose an emerging worldwide threat (Fisher et al., 2012), with much concern in North America paid to the conservation of hibernating bats because of the risk these taxa face from the fungal disease white-nose syndrome (Blehert et al., 2009, 2011; Foley et al., 2011).”
Integral chain management of wildlife diseases (2020, background): “Globalization has precipitated multiple introductions of devastating wildlife and plant fungal diseases such as Dutch elm blight, sudden oak death, American chestnut blight, white nose syndrome in bats and chytridiomycosis in amphibians (Fisher et al., 2012).”
Low impact of chytridiomycosis on frog recruitment enables persistence in refuges despite high adult mortality (2015, background): “Emerging infectious diseases are increasingly threatening wildlife, and have been implicated in recent high profile die-offs in bats, bees and corals (Daszak et al., 2000; Fisher et al., 2012).”
The global spread of crop pests and pathogens (2014, background): “However, new, virulent variants of pests are constantly evolving (Stukenbrock & McDonald, 2008; Fisher et al., 2012); their emergence is favoured by increased sizes of pest populations and their rapid life cycles, so forcing diversifying selection and heralding the appearance of new aggressive genot”
The Top 10 oomycete pathogens in molecular plant pathology. (2014, background): “Today, late blight remains a major constraint to the production of potato, the world’s third largest staple crop, and is thus a constant threat to food security (Fisher et al., 2012; Haverkort et al., 2008).”
Improving ITS sequence data for identification of plant pathogenic fungi (2014, background): “Precise knowledge of the identity of the causal agent(s) of any given plant disease is the first step toward meaningful countermeasures and disease surveillance (Rossman and PalmHernández 2008; Kowalski and Holdenrieder 2009; Fisher et al. 2012).”