Plenty of us worry about how long redwood trees and polar bears and elephants can hold out while climate change accelerates.

But a warming planet also has consequences for the very tiniest living things.

And a lot can go haywire when conditions change for microorganisms, including new

geographic ranges for what we think of as tropical diseases and pathogens that adapt to new conditions

and gain the ability to make us sick.

From KERA in Dallas, this is Think.

I'm Chris Boyd. One big concern at the moment is fungal infections. Most species of fungus can't grow

very well at temperatures above 86 degrees, so we humans have been safe from the vast majority

of fungal infections that plague other animals,

especially the cold-blooded ones. But if fungi evolve in response to a broadly warmer climate,

my guest will tell us that could be really bad news. Shaila Love is a journalist who writes

about science, health, and the mind. Her article Breeding Ground appears in the New Yorker. Shaila, welcome back to

think. Thanks so much for having me. Most coverage of climate change is all about the species

that will no longer thrive in particular locations, right? I was, I have to tell you, I was drawn to

this article because I hadn't thought about what it means that some organisms will thrive in new locations.

And most species on this planet that might change in that way are microscopic.

That's exactly right.

And I will share that I'm the same as you when I worried about climate change.

I thought about the canonical species that we've been told

will suffer, like the polar bear floating on the shard of ice or the bees dying off and they're

not able to pollinate anymore. And of course, humans, we worry a lot about how humans will

survive in a warming planet. But microbes, which is a group of life that includes bacteria and fungi and

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