Wunderry Plus subscribers can listen to USA Today's The Excerpt, ad free right now.

Join Wunderry Plus in the Wundery app.

Hello and welcome to the Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday March 7th, 2024 and this is a special episode of the

excerpt. So fungi are among us more than we realize. From the backs of frogs to our own backyard, fungi, a largely neglected group of pathogens, are becoming a

prevalent and widespread concern among scientists and health experts alike.

The main reason, climate change.

Joining me today on the excerpt to discuss what's causing this explosion in disease-causing

fungi is Dr. Arturo-Cossedovol, chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at John Hopkins

Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Arturo, thank you for being on the show.

Thank you for having data.

We didn't care as much about fungi until recently.

Why should we be concerned about their threat?

So the reason that we need to be concerned about them is because even though fungal diseases are still

relatively rare for most people when they happen they are of high consequence. they carry a high morbidity and mortality and they often are very

hard to treat. One has to take antifungal drugs for a very long time.

What role is climate change played in influencing the growth of infectious fungi?

For agriculture, we need to think that the fungi are the major pathogens of plants.

And what climate change is doing, first let's talk about agriculture first, is that it is expanding the range of some of these

fungal passages.

And the reason that is a major problem for us is because they threaten agriculture, they threaten our food supply.

When it comes to us, what we are seeing, the role of climate change is more subtle right now but we think it's going to be a bigger

...