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Emerging fungal threats to animal, plant and ecosystem health

Nature volume 484, pages 186–194 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

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.

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Figure 1: Worldwide reporting trends in fungal EIDs.
Figure 2: Fungal disease dynamics leading to host extinction.

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Acknowledgements

M.C.F. was supported by grants from the Wellcome Trust, Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), and the European Research Area (ERA)-net project BiodivERsA. D.A.H. was supported by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust, C.J.B. was supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Ecology of Infectious Disease grant EF-0723563. S.J.G. was supported by grants from the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the John Fell Fund of the University of Oxford, and S.L.M. was supported by a graduate scholarship from Magdalen College, University of Oxford. J.S.B. was supported by Google.org and the National Institutes of Health grant 5R01LM010812-02. N. Knowlton and J. Heitman provided impetus to develop this review.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College, London W2 1PG, UK,

    Matthew C. Fisher & Daniel. A. Henk

  2. Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, 93106-9620, California, USA

    Cheryl J. Briggs

  3. Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Children's Hospital Boston, 02115, Massachusetts, USA

    John S. Brownstein

  4. International Society for Infectious Diseases; and Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology, ProMED, University of Massachusetts Medical School,

    Lawrence C. Madoff

  5. and Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Massachusetts, 01655, USA

    Lawrence C. Madoff

  6. Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3RB, UK,

    Sarah L. McCraw & Sarah J. Gurr

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M.C. F., D.A.H., C.J.B., S.L.M. and S.J.G designed, analysed and wrote the paper. Data were collected and analysed by J.S.B. and L.C.M.

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Fisher, M., Henk, D., Briggs, C. et al. Emerging fungal threats to animal, plant and ecosystem health. Nature 484, 186–194 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10947

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