There’s a Fungus Amongst Us

There’s a fungus among us, beneath winter’s breath,
It feasts upon shadows and dances with death.
In the hollow of tree roots, in mulch damp and deep,
It hums ancient secrets the soil wants to keep.A quiet musician with spores for a song,
Its kingdom has waited, unseen all along.
From rot it makes wonder, from endings — new start,
There’s a fungus among us, with roots in the heart

Imagine inhaling hundreds of invisible spores every day. Most float in and out of our airways without leaving a trace. Yet some of those spores belong to molds that don’t respect boundaries.

Farmers spray azole fungicides to protect wheat and peanuts; doctors use nearly identical azole drugs to save patients with lung infections. That overlap nudges Aspergillus toward drug resistance – similar to bacteria evolving against antibiotics.

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After studying fungal threats for years, Dr. Norman van Rhijn and colleagues at The University of Manchester mapped how three notorious Aspergillus species – A. flavus, A. fumigatus, and A. niger – might spread through the end of the century.

They fed climate change scenarios into global models and watched the virtual spores drift. One scenario (SSP585), which assumes a fossil-fuel-dependent future, paints an unsettling picture: habitats across Europe become markedly friendlier to these pathogens.