The Mycological Toll of a Disrupted Planet: Climate Change, Environmental Stress, and Emerging Fungal Resistance

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change and environmental stressors, including pollutants, deforestation, land-use change, and agricultural antifungal applications, are increasingly recognized as key drivers of fungal pathogen emergence, virulence enhancement, and antifungal resistance. This Special Issue is dedicated to exploring how these interconnected pressures shape the biology of pathogenic fungi, with the explicit goal of correlating environmental change with the rise of new and more dangerous fungal threats. Anthropogenic climate change is reshaping the biosphere in ways that extend far beyond shifts in temperature and precipitation. By amplifying environmental variability, disrupting ecological equilibria, and intensifying selective pressures across multiple biological scales, global warming is emerging as a critical, yet underappreciated, driver of fungal pathogen evolution. Fungi occupy a unique position in this context: unlike most mammalian pathogens, they must overcome the thermal barrier imposed by endothermy, a physiological defense that has historically constrained fungal pathogenicity. However, progressive increases in ambient temperatures, combined with more frequent and intense heat waves, are eroding this barrier, potentially expanding the pool of thermotolerant fungal lineages capable of infecting warm-blooded hosts and giving rise to novel pathogens. It is critical to note that environmental stressors do not act in isolation. Pollutants and other anthropogenic contaminants can directly modulate fungal stress-response pathways, promoting the acquisition of virulence traits and cross-resistance to antifungal agents. Combined with ecosystem fragmentation and agricultural antifungal use, these pressures generate complex selective landscapes that simultaneously drive the emergence of new pathogens, render classical pathogens more virulent, and accelerate the evolution of antifungal resistance. Their interactions produce nonlinear eco-evolutionary dynamics that challenge traditional epidemiological models and demand integrative theoretical frameworks.

This Special Issue welcomes the submission of original research articles, systematic reviews, and perspectives that explore the eco-evolutionary, molecular, genomic, and epidemiological dimensions of climate- and pollutant-driven fungal emergence. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: thermal adaptation and thermotolerance in fungal pathogens; climate-associated shifts in fungal geographic ranges; the role of pollutants and environmental contaminants in pathogen emergence and virulence; environmental drivers of antifungal resistance; the role of ecological disturbance in virulence evolution; and predictive modeling of fungal emergence under future climate scenarios. By bringing together researchers from mycology, evolutionary biology, infectious disease epidemiology, and environmental science, this Special Issue aims to establish a comprehensive and forward-looking framework for understanding how climate change and environmental stressors, including pollutants, act as catalysts for the emergence of new fungal pathogens, the exacerbation of classical ones, and the global spread of antifungal resistance.

Dr. Susana Frases
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• climate change
• fungal pathogens
• antifungal resistance
• virulence evolution
• thermal adaptation
• emerging mycoses
• environmental stressors
• eco-evolutionary dynamics
• fungal epidemiology