Current challenges in fungal conservation: from DNA to climate change
The ongoing biodiversity crisis, driven by land transformations, pollution, and climate change, poses a major conservation challenge, yet fungi remain largely overlooked in extinction risk studies and protected areas. Recently, growing efforts like national fungal Red Lists have emerged, and tools like metabarcoding or species distribution modeling proved to be a useful step to fill the gap in our knowledge on fungal conservation, but much research is still needed. My research primarily addresses conservation hot topics like eDNA capability to improve knowledge on fungal diversity and distribution, and integration of fungi into protected areas network systems, with a focus on threatened species.
