Abstract
Abstract Key message Increasing human impacts on forests, including unintentional movement of pathogens, climate change, and large-scale intensive plantations, are associated with an unprecedented rate of new diseases. An evolutionary ecology perspective can help address these challenges and provide direction for sustainable forest management. Context Forest pathology has historically relied on an ecological approach to understand and address the practical management of forest diseases. A widening of this perspective to include evolutionary considerations has been increasingly developed in response to the rising rates of genetic change in both pathogen populations and tree populations due to human activities. Aims Here, five topics for which the evolutionary perspective is especially relevant are highlighted. Results The first relates to the evolutionary diversity of fungi and fungal-like organisms, with issues linked to the identification of species and their ecological niches. The second theme deals with the evolutionary processes that allow forest pathogens to adapt to new hosts after introductions or to become more virulent in homogeneous plantations. The third theme presents issues linked to disease resistance in tree breeding programs (e.g., growth-defense trade-offs) and proposes new criteria and methods for more durable resistance. The last two themes are dedicated to the biotic environment of the tree–pathogen system, namely, hyperparasites and tree microbiota, as possible solutions for health management. Conclusion We conclude by highlighting three major conceptual advances brought by evolutionary biology, i.e., that (i) “not everything is everywhere”, (ii) evolution of pathogen populations can occur on short time scales, and (iii) the tree is a multitrophic community. We further translate these into a framework for immediate policy recommendations and future directions for research.
Highlights
A widening of this perspective to include evolutionary considerations has been increasingly developed in response to the rising rates of genetic change in both pathogen populations and tree populations due to human activities. & Aims Here, five topics for which the evolutionary perspective is especially relevant are highlighted. & Results The first relates to the evolutionary diversity of fungi and fungal-like organisms, with issues linked to the identification of species and their ecological niches
Desprez-Loustau et al The last two themes are dedicated to the biotic environment of the tree–pathogen system, namely, hyperparasites and tree microbiota, as possible solutions for health management. & Conclusion We conclude by highlighting three major conceptual advances brought by evolutionary biology, i.e., that (i) “not everything is everywhere”, (ii) evolution of pathogen populations can occur on short time scales, and (iii) the tree is a multitrophic community
We focus here on forest pathology as the art and science of forest diseases and their control, it should be reminded that forest pathologists more generally contribute to the ecology of parasitism
Summary
Forest pathology deals with the diseases of forest trees, which are mainly caused by fungal and oomycete pathogens, in both their fundamental and applied aspects. Interspecific recombination events involving nuclear and mitochondrial genomes have been increasingly recognized as an important factor in the evolution of plant pathogens and their adaptation to new environmental conditions, for example enabling them to perform host jumps between phylogenetically divergent species (Newcombe et al 2000; Schardl and Craven 2003; Parker and Gilbert 2004; Giraud et al 2008a,b; Stukenbrock and McDonald 2008; Stukenbrock 2013). Once the species barrier has been overcome and very high mortality rates have occurred in a new host, it has long been supposed that pathogen populations should evolve towards lesser virulence, in the meaning used by evolutionary biologists, i.e., the amount of damage a parasite causes to its host, encompassing both infectivity (the ability to colonize a host) and severity of the disease (Frank 1996; Parker and Gilbert 2004). Because planted forests are expected to increase rapidly in the future, special attention toward predicting pathogen evolution in interaction with future forest management practices is surely required
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