The Fungi Facing Extinction and the Conservationists Working Hard to Protect Them

Hey Science Quickly listeners, Rachel here. I just wanted to give you a heads up that I'll be taking a short break from hosting the pod to go on parental leave. But don't worry, I'm leaving you in excellent hands. A word-winning journalist Kendra Pierre-Louis is stepping in to host Science Quickly while I'm gone. You might recognize her from the late Gimlet Media podcast How to Save a Planet, or from her work at Bloomberg, The New York Times, Popular Science, and lots of other outlets. She's taking the helm starting in November, and I'll be coming back into your feed some time in the spring of 2026. So see you next year, and as always, thanks for listening. For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feldman. Even if you don't know what the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List is off the top of your head, I can pretty much guarantee you've heard of it. The IUCN keeps tabs on the conservation status of living organisms all over the globe. Giant pandas are listed as vulnerable on the Red List, the Asian giant tortoise is marked as critically endangered, and lots of other charismatic megafauna have gotten not-so-honorable mentions too. But the IUCN recently sounded the conservation alarm for some creatures many of us spend a lot less time thinking about—fungi. In March, the IUCN announced that its experts had assessed 482 fungi species for the first time, bringing the Red List's fungal members up to 1300. Around a third of those species are at risk of extinction. Most folks don't care much about mushrooms or molds, which the IUCN says is a big problem. Today's guests will help us understand why. I'm joined by Gregory Mueller, Chief Scientist Emeritus at the Chicago Botanic Garden and Coordinator of Fungal Conservation Programs for the IUCN, and Anders Dahlberg, a Professor of Micology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Thank you both so much for coming on to talk today. It's our pleasure. It is. It's really a pleasure. So, the IUCN is sounding the alarm for fungi. Gregory, I'll start with a question for you. Is this news surprising to mycologists? I don't think it's very surprising for mycologists, but for the broader conservation community it is. For a long time, it was assumed that fungi really didn't need to be a focus of conservation efforts because either they weren't in trouble or they existed in such a broad part of the world. They existed everywhere, each species, that if there was a problem in one place, it was fine in another. And now we know that, like animals and plants, fungi have very discreet distributions, discreet habitat preferences, so if something's in trouble in one place, it probably is in trouble. And Anders, why do you think fungi have kind of gotten the short end of the stick from a conservation standpoint? I think that most of the time they live cryptic. They are not seen, although we have an immense diversity of species of fungi in the world, and therefore they have been overlooked. They haven't been considered, although they are omnipresent and they are vital players for everything in how things are working in nature. So I think that people have considered it difficult to handle the presence of species and to understand whether they are threatened or not. And Gregory, could you tell our listeners a little bit about why this kingdom of life is so important to protect? Sure. So fungi play incredible ecological roles. They are nature's recyclers, so they're the recyclers of dead, organic material. Now when that happens in your back of your refrigerator, when it's rotten in the orange or something back there, you don't like it, but in nature, it's breaking down the wood, the dead leaves, everything like that, so really essential to recycle everything. Secondly, there are some that are important pathogens that cause disease of plants and some animals, but many of them also form critically important symbiosis, mutualisms, that plants are required to grow and thrive. And so without these fungi, we just wouldn't have nature as we know it. It just wouldn't survive, and then on top of that, there's all kind of economic reasons that fungi are important for food, for medicines and things like that. I like to say life as we know it on this planet would not exist without fungi. Could you give our listeners some examples of some of those symbiotic relationships? What are some plants that would really be in trouble without fungi? Sure. Our pines, our oaks, all of those require a relationship with what we call mycorrhizal fungi. The mushroom that's growing through the ground absorbs water and nutrients and transports that to the roots of the tree, and in return, the tree provides sugars that it makes before the synthesis, passes down into the roots and into the fungus. So it's kind of a controlled parasitism, if you want to say, but both partners require the other partner to survive and thrive. And those are some of our great edible species, chanterelles, bowlleads, things like that, are also these mycorrhizal fungi. And I think there is an addition to add to that as well. These symbiotes have been evolving since the very beginning when the first plants started to come up to land four or five hundred million years ago. So in principle, every single plant all over the world have these symbiotic relationships and have evolved to take up nutrients from the soil and water through these symbiotes. A little bit like our microbiome in our stomach and intestines is working the same way. So there are probably a lot of downstream effects of fungi struggling that we might not even be aware of yet. Definitely that there are. And they are exposed to the same stresses as animals and plants that when the habitat are changing, when we are more intensively used agriculture land or areas around towns are using the forests, that is affecting fungal species in the same or similar ways as it does for animals and plants. And what other kinds of threats are fungi facing? So the main threats are sort of the changing habitats that we humans are using the land. And that's nothing strange. I mean, I'm often saying that nature doesn't care, but we are caring nature. Species are just adjusting to the prevailing conditions. Some are favored, others are disfavored, depending on how we manage our land. And then there are other threats besides the habitat use, of course. It's like the nitrogen deposition that we are using the cars and engines and causing a lot of nitrogen that is enriching, making the soil and land more fertile. As well as the changing climates, they are gradually chained in the conditions for the plants, up on which most fungi are dependent and increasing the incidence of fires of particular species that are restricted to certain habitats that the fire prone are subjected to disappear due to the increased incidence of fire, for example. Gregory, what are you hoping to see change so that we can protect the world's fungi? I think the first thing is a recognition that fungi need to be considered in conservation policy, in conservation actions, and that they get the attention that they need. Today, pretty much they're out of sight, out of mind, and are not being considered. And hopefully this raises that awareness that we need to be thinking about fungi, we need to be incorporating fungi in our actions. I think part of the issue that people are always saying we can't do things about fungi is because there are so many of them that we don't know yet. There's about 160,000 described species, but there's an estimate of two to three million species. So you say, "Oh, what do we know?" but I think what this study shows is that we know a lot. We know enough to be able to include fungi in our work, to recognize that fungi are in need of protection. And so, yeah, we need a lot more work. We need a lot more information, but we know enough to do the work that needs to be done. And I think also this, that things we don't see is difficult to know about, and it's even more difficult to appreciate such things as cryptic fungi mostly are. And we really need to be aware of these cryptic organisms in order to safeguard their existence if we want so for the future. Yeah. Well, my last question for both of you. Mycology was my favorite subject as an undergrad, but I think most people don't spend much time thinking about fungi. So I would love to just ask you, what do you love about studying mycology? You know, what's something you wish the general public knew so that they could appreciate this kingdom more? For me, as it's diversity, the beauty. I got excited because we knew so little bit about, but what we knew was so exciting. The fact that these are intimately associated with other organisms. So as a scientist, I work with mutualistic organisms. So I need to be a mutualistic biologist. I need to work with my plant colleagues. I need to work with my animal colleagues. And so I can't work independently. I need to be thinking about the entire system to be able to do my work. And I find that very exciting. It's really a fascinating life form and in a way, it's sort of parallel to the animals that they have the same ancestors, just two different branches. So in a way, I look upon it as different way of packaging DNA that are moving in space and time where fungi have their way with the mycelia that may be short-lived or long-lived. They may be small. They may be extensively large. I mean, they can be like sort of plankton or they can be largely as this guy in large aspen. The pandu you have in Utah, for example, it's an immense variation in life forms and sizes and things like that. And that fascinates us, me particularly, to dwell into that, to better understand how they make their lives go around. Well, thank you both so much for coming on to chat today. This has been great. Thank you. Thank you. That's all for today's episode. We'll be back on Monday with our usual science news roundup. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Fultman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naima Marci, and Jeff Del Vicio. This episode was edited by Alec Sugiarra, Shayna Posis, and Erin Shaddick fact check her show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news. For Scientific American, this is Rachel Fultman. Have a great weekend.