Nov. 6, 2025

Climate Change and the Rise and Spread of Pathogens

Send us a text The climate isn’t just warming—it’s reorganizing the rules of biology. We explore how rising temperatures, deforestation, wildfire smoke, and thawing permafrost are reshaping the risk landscape for malaria parasites, heat-trained fungi, spillover-prone viruses, and resilient bacteria. From Kenyan highlands that became friendlier to Anopheles mosquitoes, to urban heat islands that may condition fungi to tolerate our body temperature, to the sobering lesson of Siberia’s anthrax o...

Send us a text

The climate isn’t just warming—it’s reorganizing the rules of biology. We explore how rising temperatures, deforestation, wildfire smoke, and thawing permafrost are reshaping the risk landscape for malaria parasites, heat-trained fungi, spillover-prone viruses, and resilient bacteria. From Kenyan highlands that became friendlier to Anopheles mosquitoes, to urban heat islands that may condition fungi to tolerate our body temperature, to the sobering lesson of Siberia’s anthrax outbreak after unusual warmth, we connect data points to the lived reality of health systems on the front lines.

We dive into malaria’s life cycle and why vector capacity accelerates in warmer, deforested microclimates. We examine fungal threats, including how wildfire smoke can disperse spores, and why limited antifungal options raise the stakes. On viruses, we unpack Ebola’s reservoir ecology, the role of habitat loss and food insecurity in human–animal interfaces, and how language and stigma can undermine outbreak response. Finally, we look at bacterial risks within permafrost feedback loops and across water and food systems, where floods, droughts, and soil microbiome shifts threaten safety and yields.

Throughout, we keep solutions in focus: protecting forests and wetlands, cutting fossil fuels and air pollution, building climate-smart surveillance and diagnostics, and communicating with dignity so communities participate in prevention. Climate action is infection prevention—and it starts now. If this conversation sparked new questions or ideas, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review to help more people find the show. What solutions can you enact in your life to face the rising threat?

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00:00 - Welcome Back And Life Updates

04:58 - Setting The Stage: Anthropocene And Solutions

10:49 - Framing The Scope And Complexity

10:50 - Malaria Basics And Climate Links

16:14 - Deforestation, Warming, And Vector Shifts

20:46 - Human Behavior, Ticks, And Vector Movement

22:38 - Fungal Threats In A Warming World

31:10 - Smoke, Spores, And Urban Heat Islands

37:54 - Ebola, Reservoirs, And Land Use Change

46:18 - Language, Stigma, And Public Health

51:07 - Permafrost, Bacteria, And Feedback Loops

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This is a podcast about one health.

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The idea that the health of humans, animals, plants, and the environment that we all share are intrinsically linked.

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Coming to you from the University of Texas Medical Branch and the Galveston National Laboratory.

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This is Infectious Science, where enthusiasm for science is contagious.

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Hello, welcome back to the infectious science podcast.

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We are now completely online.

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We are calling in from different places.

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We haven't seen each other in a while.

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Christina, I haven't seen you in like months.

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How are you?

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It's been a really long time.

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Where are you?

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How are you doing?

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How's med school treating you after you just completely disappeared?

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What's going on in your life?

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So third year started basically.

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We took our first licensing test, step one, and then moved on to third year.

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And third year is typically just like the most rigorous year of med school.

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So you're working full time, but you're also studying full time, and it's just it's a lot after a while.

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So just hanging in there.

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But that's why I've disappeared off the face of the earth this year.

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I do apologize, but it's so good to be back.

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It's so good to see you guys too, and to get to record this and also just learn from you guys and have fun and catch up.

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So I'm excited to be here.

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I thought people always say that med school gets easier the further you get through the coursework, no?

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I would say like first two years, I would say that's consistent just because you develop study habits that really get you through the rest of the pre-clinical years.

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But then clinical years, third year is definitely the hardest year, and I would say that's typically the hardest year of the entire medical school curriculum, just because of the balance between working and studying.

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Yeah.

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And your studio looks a little studioed.

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Your uh desk looks a little different.

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Are you calling in from Galveston?

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Uh where are you currently?

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I am.

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I'm calling in from my home, which is in League City.

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But I always just say Galveston because I don't think a lot of people know where League City is.

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Yeah.

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But yeah, I'm still local, but I know Miss Camille is not.

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She got up and left.

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Where are you at, girl?

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I am in upstate New York, which is beautiful.

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It's autumn right now.

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We're recording this towards the end of October, and it's absolutely gorgeous.

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The leaves are falling, and every time I step outside, I just inhale the smell of falling leaves.

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It's so good.

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Yeah, I'm doing good.

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And I'm loving that I have access to apple orchards and like apple cider again because I miss those things in Texas.

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That sounds so wholesome as a Texanite.

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I could not imagine that.

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So Texanite.

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You've got to explore the north.

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You've got to explore the north.

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It's so gorgeous.

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And I love being in the mountains again.

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I miss the mountains when I was in Texas.

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I could never go hiking in Texas.

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I could only go like walking, at least where I lived in Texas, because it was just like so flat.

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That's something that's been so important about the state.

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I used to go hiking all the time when I was back in Reno in Nevada because we were so close to the Sierra Nevada and Lake Tahoe, all those hiking trails around there.

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Around here, if you get an elevation gain of more than 17 feet, I'll call it good.

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That is true.

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Yeah, the most elevation you gain in Galveston is like going up a set of stairs.

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That's it.

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Very fair.

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Agree.

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Very true.

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Alex, were you in Galveston right now?

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Yes, I'm on Island.

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So yeah, just in ensconced in my apartment at the moment.

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And I must say, I I think I've had a chance to see you a little more in recent weeks, considering now that I've been collaborating with Dr.

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Benta, which I've really enjoyed.

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So I ended up moving in a bit of a different direction after my qualifying exams.

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And so now I'm working with Dr.

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Caitlin Cotter and Dr.

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Courtney Wolsey.

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And I am proud to say that Dr.

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Benta is going to be on my committee indeed.

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So I've got to be able to do that.

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Oh exciting.

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Oh, I know.

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Have you nailed on your topic yet?

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Can you talk about it at this point?

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At this point, we're settling on the topic.

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I still need to work on getting my candidates sleep proposal all in order, but I think that the broad scope of it at this point is going to be a project that's uh looking at the intersection between loss of virus disease and pregnancy, and looking at that from an epidemiological perspective, right?

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And also uh looking at that using actual patient serum samples from Nigeria and looking at some of the biomarkers that are associated with severe disease in the pregnant individuals.

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Yeah, but still a work in progress.

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Yeah, cool.

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All right.

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So today's topic is one of my favorites.

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It's climate change.

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Can we say this word out loud?

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Do you think we're gonna get like immediately No?

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I it's I it is peppered throughout my notes for this episode.

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So we start us off with yeah, absolutely.

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So I think it's really important to begin this episode by defining the anthropocene.

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This is a period of time that we're currently living in.

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So we're living in the Anthropocene right now, and it's characterized by humans being the most influential species on our planet.

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And so it's really widely accepted that we, and by we I mean humanity, have really deeply impacted our planet, right?

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So, particularly in the past 60 years.

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In the course of natural history, humanity's actions are pretty unnatural in how we've affected the world that we live in.

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And our current lifestyles really rely on things like natural resource extraction, and that disrupts ecosystems.

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We've seen unprecedented carbon dioxide emissions, global warming, acidification of our oceans, and habitat destruction, as well as massive extinctions.

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And what we really want to focus on today in this episode, against this really urgent change is needed backdrop, is the impact of the Anthropocene on multiple classes of pathogens.

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So we're gonna talk about fungi, we're gonna talk about viruses, bacteria, parasites.

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But just super quickly before we jump into that, as many of them are a really big reader and post-PHD, I am like reading even more because I actually have like more brain space for reading.

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And I recently came across this erasure poem of a news piece that was documenting a funeral that was held for a glacier in Iceland.

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And this is gonna be like relevant later because I do talk a lot about permafrost.

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But what's really interesting is that there was a plaque dedicated during this funeral for the glacier, and on it was inscribed this.

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So this is a direct quote: a letter to the future.

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Okay is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier.

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In the next 200 years, all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.

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This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done.

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Only you know if we did it.

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I find that super poignant in the current moment because the undercurrent to all the concerns we're going to discuss in this episode is that we really do know what environmental problems we have created.

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And for the most part, we really do know how to resolve them.

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And so I was actually recently reading a Natural History Museum article, and it really outlines what steps do we have that we've agreed on to like move towards a better future.

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And it's things like stopping the mining of fossil fuels and transitioning to reliance on sustainable alternatives.

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That's something we urgently need.

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So is reducing emission of air pollutants, right?

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And those things can go hand in hand.

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We also really concur that we need to protect at-risk ecosystems.

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Those are things like wetlands and coral reefs.

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And we know that things like eating less meat reduces environmental strain.

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And I say that as a kid who grew up on a beef farm.

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So I don't know if anyone has questions about that.

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And also, we know that shifting economic goals and reducing inequality and stabilizing the world's population will also help us move towards a better future.

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So I just want to note before we jump into everything in this episode, these aren't easy changes to make, and so a lot of them have not been made, because the systems, there aren't really systems designed to support people during these shifts that we know need to be made so that no one gets really unequitable or punishing treatment as the changes we need to avert disaster are being made.

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And so I just want to start off with the anthropocene, and we know what needs to be done because we know these are the solutions we need to rapidly enact.

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And there just really isn't enough being done in like a corporate or a government or necessarily an internationally collaborative scale, which is often where change is most needed.

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So then individual change can sort of gather weight within a system that's already designed to reinforce it.

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So that's the current crisis.

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And maybe if an if I can jump in and just make an announcement to our listeners as well, right?

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This is a very complex topic.

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And if you've listened to the previous episodes, we always take the lens of focusing on pathogens and not necessarily only from the perspective of pathogens, but this topic climate change is obviously much broader than that, right?

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There's an influence on plants, on humans.

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It's just so broad.

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I think we would have to have a whole season just to cover these topics.

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Now I want to uh do a quick plug here, I guess.

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I took a class, an online class that Yale offers.

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It's called Health and Climate.

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And it's an online course that you take, it's over a few months, and I took so much away from that.

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And I think probably the key message for me is just how complex and how interconnected everything is, and from heat stress to losing water and so on.

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So I just wanted to preface this episode by saying we're taking a snapshot of certain aspects, but obviously this whole topic is much, much broader.

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Oh, yeah, absolutely.

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I for sure echo that.

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And everything we're talking about today, these are things that come up and we can just scratch the surface of.

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But there's so much more to this topic, and it can be hard to engage with, right?

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Because it can feel very hopeless.

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But I guess I wanted to preface it the way that I did because we do know what needs to be done, and there are actions we can take.

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And so I think that's just always an important thing to me to set up when you talk about climate change, is that we do know what needs to be done, and there are actions we can take, and then get into like, all right, so what problems are we facing?

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So then we can think about how do we move forward and why does it matter that we do move forward.

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Alex, do you want to jump in?

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Absolutely, yeah.

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Well, to that end, so I think I'll start out by talking a bit about the genus of parasite responsible for causing malaria and how your human-driven climate change has ultimately impacted malaria prevalence and incidence.

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So, just to give at first just a brief introduction about malaria, so it's obviously caused by an infection with parasites of the genus Plasmodium and the spread through the bites of mosquitoes of the genus Anophiles.

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And so there are 249 million cases annually and about 608,000 deaths annually per the World Health Organization as of 2022.

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The vast majority of these were concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and were as a result of infection with Plasmodium falciparum, which is the most virulent of the Plasmodium pathogens in general.

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And so, to give a basic overview in terms of how malaria's pathogenicity works exactly, there are various stages of life of the malarial parasite that it goes through.

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And those stages can have differing impacts on both the human immune system as well as they're intrinsically tied to a replication within the Anopheles mosquitoes themselves.

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You gave such a great overview of basically plasmodium and malaria and how it infects people and how it, I guess, evolves within the body.

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So just to synthesize what you said, malaria is, and correct me if I'm wrong, okay?

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I want to understand.

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But basically, malaria is a parasitic infection that is spread by the anophiles mosquito.

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And so the mosquito bites, and it basically gives the parasites to the victim of the bite, and these parasites go to the liver, right?

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And that's where they mature, and then from the liver, they go and they spread throughout the body or and infect red blood cells.

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And so that's why malaria is really dangerous, is because not only are red blood cells necessary for carrying oxygen throughout the body, but these parasites essentially cause the death of the red blood cells.

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And so with fewer red blood cells in the body, there's less oxygen being sent throughout the body, and there's also this inflammatory reaction within the body that can cause a lot of other detrimental side effects.

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Is that correct?

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Absolutely, yes.

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That's a perfect summary.

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Okay, cool.

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I just wanted to make sure, yeah.

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Alex, why did you pick malaria, just that of interest as a disease?

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Is it because of its global impact, or is it was it just a disease of interest for you in general, or why did you pick that as the topic?

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A bit of both, a bit of both.

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Because it was something that when I was an undergrad, my research had been characterizing the interactions of this crystalline toxin produced by Bacillus therogensis, known as Cryfor B, which had these insecticidal interactions with the caterin receptor inside of the mid-gut of Anopheles gambiae, which is the principal vector for plasmodium falciparum, which is the most lethal of the malarial agents.

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And so I've always been interested in malaria for some time after going and doing some of that research in undergrad, but the scope of my research, of course, never really touched the parasite itself.

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So I figured it'd be fun to uh learn some more and talk about it here.

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But also, it's just, yeah, just something that absolutely, as you mentioned, the global health significance of it is just something that's worth noting.

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And so I figured may as well call attention to it and for that too.

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Alex, before I interrupted you, sorry, you were getting towards the whole topic of global warming and climate change and how malaria is potentially becoming more prevalent because of the change that we're seeing within our global climate, is that correct?

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Absolutely, yes.

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There have been significant issues when it comes to, yeah, deforestation and forest degradation being these really big drivers of climate change.

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They're ultimately estimated to constitute about 12 to 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions annually.

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And because you know, as you're releasing and removing these carbon sinks rather from the global ecosystem, right, you're releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, which can be deeply problematic.

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And a number of these changes, of course, are linked to changes in land use, right?

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Clearance of forest lands for subsistence agriculture, as well as for industrial farming.

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And so these can help to, in some ways, resolve perhaps issues of local food insecurity that in and of themselves are driven by climate change indirectly or may contribute to global markets, right?

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But the issue though with deforestation is that it has a significant impact on also then warming these environments that enable anophthalese mosquitoes to then better thrive, right?

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So there was this 2006 study that found that in these deforested areas in the Kenyan Highlands, that these areas were about 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer in the dry season and 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer in the wet season.

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And that doesn't sound like much, but these mosquitoes were found to have considerable increases then in their net reproductive rate and in their populational intrinsic growth rate in these areas, which thus enabled an increase overall in the vectorial capacity of these mosquitoes to go about being vectors of the malarial parasites themselves, thus increasing the likelihood of transmission to humans, right?

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Because you have more mosquitoes and they reproduce at a higher rate, you're just going to have a greater propensity for potential mosquito-human interactions that could lead to malarial infection, which is particularly problematic.

00:16:09.120 --> 00:16:35.840
Yeah, if I could jump in, speaking of this kind of interaction between humans and vector species, I don't know if you found anything on this, but something that just popped into my head as you're talking about this, because it's really interesting, is not only may we be changing how land is being used or the microclimates that are available, but also if it's really hot out, people might be going outside to do work in times where it's cooler parts of the day, like morning or evening, where they might be more likely to come in contact with mosquitoes.

00:16:36.080 --> 00:16:50.000
So I don't necessarily know that I did not dive into malaria for this episode, but this idea that, you know, as things get hotter, not only do microclimates change and not only do land use change, but also people are trying to adapt to that to do the work that they need to do, right?

00:16:50.080 --> 00:16:56.000
If they're outside doing agricultural work in a prime time when they might be bitten by mosquitoes, they might be more likely to be exposed to malaria.

00:16:56.399 --> 00:16:57.919
No, that's a that's an excellent point.

00:16:58.080 --> 00:17:17.119
And Camille also, I think, raised a very good point there in terms of just, yeah, changes in human behavior when it comes to these warming environments and then potentially participating in some of these outdoor activities at points in the day when they are more likely to be bitten by these anophily mosquitoes is definitely a significant factor as well.

00:17:17.279 --> 00:17:17.839
Absolutely.

00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:19.920
So that's a that's a great point.

00:17:20.079 --> 00:17:29.599
So as a result of the warming climate writ large as well, what we've also seen is that some of these areas that have historically been epicenters of valarial incidents, right?

00:17:29.839 --> 00:17:47.200
Some of these equatorial regions that are historically hot and humid and in a position to support a high anophaly's population, is that we're seeing a number of these mosquitoes instead move towards more hospitable environments as those regions grow too hot to support necessarily their reproduction.

00:17:47.279 --> 00:17:59.680
And so what we've seen is over the past 30 years, increases in the incidence of malaria throughout regions in which it had been relatively low or even non-existent, such as in the Ethiopian islands.

00:17:59.839 --> 00:18:15.359
And some of that has to do with geopolitical and conflict issues when it comes to especially Ethiopia in particular, with issues over the past few years in particular, but but also you know, largely have to do with these climate changes, and that's uh a deep problem, absolutely.

00:18:15.680 --> 00:18:26.799
And the listeners are interested in human conflict, uh war and conflict, go back to a couple episodes ago when we talked about the pathogens and war, so go back to that episode.

00:18:26.960 --> 00:18:35.119
But Alex, my question for you is so you were talking about the expansion of the mosquitoes into new regions, northwards and probably southwards as well.

00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:46.799
But what we see with the tick-borne diseases is yes, there's an expansion northwards and southwards into new areas because now they become habitable for ticks.

00:18:47.039 --> 00:18:56.880
But we also see that certain areas that used to be good areas now change their climate so much that they are not suitable anymore for ticks.

00:18:56.960 --> 00:19:03.359
So it's not just a continuous expansion into all areas, but almost like a contraction, right?

00:19:03.599 --> 00:19:09.759
It goes up into a certain area, but like certain other areas will the disease or the vector will disappear.

00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:12.960
Did you read anything about that with malaria?

00:19:13.680 --> 00:19:14.559
Yes, indeed.

00:19:14.720 --> 00:19:33.119
So that's exactly what has followed as well, that there are reductions in and projected to be reductions in incidence of malaria in some of these equatorial regions in which it has grown too hot to necessarily go and support that same high population of Anopheles mosquitoes.

00:19:33.279 --> 00:19:42.319
And so, yes, that's a great point, absolutely, because yeah, it's definitely not a continuous expansion, but it'll contract in some of those historical hotspots as well.

00:19:42.480 --> 00:19:46.160
So it sounded like you've got some stuff for us too, Camille, no?

00:19:46.319 --> 00:19:47.119
Yeah, absolutely.

00:19:47.279 --> 00:19:49.519
But I don't want to cut Dennis off and talking about ticks.

00:19:49.680 --> 00:19:52.880
If you have anything more to add on ticks, now is the thing.

00:19:54.960 --> 00:19:56.240
This is your moment.

00:19:57.599 --> 00:19:59.279
My moment to shine, yes.

00:19:59.519 --> 00:20:05.039
Yeah, I think you know what the other parts, I think there's certain themes that are the same.

00:20:05.440 --> 00:20:10.960
You do see an expansion of ticks into new areas, quite a bit, actually.

00:20:11.200 --> 00:20:15.839
But what the difference is the way mosquitoes and ticks travel.

00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:23.279
Like mosquitoes can fly, they have a range of hundreds of meters, and ticks can only crawl so far.

00:20:23.440 --> 00:20:32.559
They often use animals, cows, for example, imagine like pastoralists, where you have ticks on a cow and they're moving to new areas.

00:20:32.720 --> 00:20:40.880
So they use almost other animals, wild animals, birds, and so on, as tick taxis, basically, where they get to new spaces.

00:20:41.039 --> 00:20:51.279
So the transport into new areas is slightly different than some of mosquitoes, and also the establishment of ticks into new areas is also very different than mosquito species.

00:20:51.359 --> 00:20:54.799
But I think that the tendency, generally speaking, are the same.

00:20:55.039 --> 00:20:57.839
So similar picture with slight differences.

00:20:58.000 --> 00:20:59.759
Does that answer your question, Camille?

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:01.440
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00:21:01.680 --> 00:21:03.759
I just wanted to give you a moment to talk about ticks.

00:21:03.839 --> 00:21:05.279
We know how much you want to know.

00:21:06.319 --> 00:21:08.319
And I never get to talk about ticks here.

00:21:08.880 --> 00:21:11.119
I do like a special tick episode for Dennis.

00:21:11.519 --> 00:21:13.119
Oh no, it's gonna be 99.

00:21:13.519 --> 00:21:15.599
And you can just educate the rest of us.

00:21:20.480 --> 00:21:26.400
I found a tick on me like the other day, like on my jeans, and I immediately thought of you when I saw this tick.

00:21:26.480 --> 00:21:31.599
It was like crawling up the knee of my jeans, and I was immediately like, oh, I was like, Dennis would think that's cool.

00:21:31.920 --> 00:21:34.880
Is this a good thing or a bad thing that you immediately thought of me?

00:21:38.960 --> 00:21:40.000
It's I don't know.

00:21:40.240 --> 00:21:40.960
Probably now.

00:21:41.039 --> 00:21:47.039
I feel like our listeners probably think of me whenever they hear like the fungus among us based on the episode that we did.

00:21:47.119 --> 00:21:49.519
And I am returning to fungus for this episode.

00:21:49.599 --> 00:21:50.799
So I'm gonna talk about fungi.

00:21:51.680 --> 00:21:59.039
So if you like take it, you just get yeah, you just get associated with the things that you're like really intellectually curious and excited about.

00:21:59.200 --> 00:22:02.079
So I think let's talk about fungi.

00:22:02.240 --> 00:22:06.000
Fungi and climate change is just such a cool topic, if you ask me.

00:22:06.160 --> 00:22:15.920
A former professor of mine once brought up how in the past fungal pathogens really haven't been major health concerns for humans, the way like viral and bacterial pathogens have been.

00:22:16.079 --> 00:22:28.160
And she really spoke about how this was due to the fact that the majority of, although certainly not all, fungi don't really thrive at the temperature the typical human body is at because it's really too warm for them.

00:22:28.480 --> 00:22:32.079
You can probably see where I'm going with this because we're talking about global warming.

00:22:32.319 --> 00:22:37.200
So fungi that do infect humans usually only thrive pretty superficially, right?

00:22:37.279 --> 00:22:40.720
Like they're subcutaneous, they're on our skin, something like that.

00:22:40.960 --> 00:22:44.799
Because your internal body temperature really just isn't like habitable for them.

00:22:44.960 --> 00:22:49.920
So if someone's gonna get a fungal infection, it's gonna be something like athlete's foot or ringworm, it's on the skin.

00:22:50.079 --> 00:22:55.839
And similar to we've talked about something like bacterial pathogens previously that also don't like super warm temperatures.

00:22:56.079 --> 00:23:02.240
We've talked about like on lepre and things like that ends up surviving on like the tips of the fingers or the nose first or something where it's a little cooler.

00:23:02.319 --> 00:23:10.160
And fungi are like that in a way that we've been very fortunate that a lot of fungi don't happily exist at our body temperature.

00:23:10.400 --> 00:23:11.920
But that can easily change.

00:23:12.079 --> 00:23:16.799
And that's actually something that's being tracked right now in real time, which I think is really wild.

00:23:17.039 --> 00:23:20.559
In the journal of PLOS Pathogens, this is a direct quote because I found it really interesting.

00:23:20.720 --> 00:23:28.799
For the vast majority of fungal species, the capacity to grow at elevated temperatures limits their ability to infect and establish in mammals.

00:23:28.960 --> 00:23:32.480
However, fungi can be trained to evolve thermodolerance.

00:23:32.720 --> 00:23:33.279
End quote.

00:23:33.440 --> 00:23:38.079
So global warming is Christina, your eyes just got so big.

00:23:40.880 --> 00:23:44.240
It's really, it's really, it's something out of almost like out of a horror movie, right?

00:23:44.319 --> 00:23:51.839
Like it's just global warming is absolutely giving fungal species basically the training wheels on the road to infect more humans.

00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:53.599
And I think we should all be concerned about that.

00:23:53.759 --> 00:24:00.160
I think about this probably more often than the normal average human does, but I just think people should know about it because it's wildly interesting.

00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:03.359
The planet is essentially fevered, right, with global warming.

00:24:03.440 --> 00:24:04.960
Like we've given it a fever.

00:24:05.279 --> 00:24:12.000
And the freedom we have previously really enjoyed from the threat of fungal pathogens might be coming to an end because of that.

00:24:12.160 --> 00:24:15.759
And I was reading this paper called Climate Change and the Emergence of Fungal Pathogens.

00:24:15.839 --> 00:24:16.799
And so this is a quote from that.

00:24:16.880 --> 00:24:23.839
So gradual adaptation to increasing temperature caused by climate change could lead to an increase of organisms that can cause disease.

00:24:24.079 --> 00:24:24.960
That makes sense, right?

00:24:25.119 --> 00:24:25.680
It tracks.

00:24:25.920 --> 00:24:28.480
We're increasing the temperature of the entire planet.

00:24:28.640 --> 00:24:31.039
So things need to adapt to live at those temperatures.

00:24:31.279 --> 00:24:43.119
And so warming the planet means that these fungal pathogens are going to be adapting to survive and thrive at higher temperatures, which are temperatures that are far closer to a human's body temperature than we probably want to be comfortable with.

00:24:43.359 --> 00:24:54.319
And some scientists have also proceeded to warn that climate change can increase the geographic range of pathogenic species or their vectors, leading to the emergence of diseases in areas where they've previously not been reported.

00:24:54.400 --> 00:25:06.079
So, Alex, you just talked about that with mosquitoes, but the same also holds true for fungi because of the way we've warmed up the planet, but also other sort of wild weather events that are happening.

00:25:06.240 --> 00:25:11.759
What's concerning about this is that fungi, there's currently no vaccines for fungal pathogens.

00:25:11.839 --> 00:25:13.839
There's some under development, but there's none approved.

00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:16.240
And we have pretty limited antifungal agents.

00:25:16.400 --> 00:25:23.839
And what's also interesting when you consider a fungal pathogen versus something like a virus or a bacterium is that fungi can live sapotrophically.

00:25:23.920 --> 00:25:30.960
So they can produce large quantities of infectious spores, and they don't require host-to-host contact to establish infection.

00:25:31.200 --> 00:25:33.359
So they're really uniquely capable.

00:25:33.519 --> 00:25:42.160
This is a quote fungi seem to be uniquely capable of causing complete host extinction, which is like not a great idea to think about.

00:25:42.319 --> 00:25:45.759
But it's something that we should be concerned about and thoughtful of.

00:25:46.079 --> 00:25:54.240
Because we have, I think, in some cases and in a lot of academic journals, there's these scientists that are sort of ringing the alarm bells about global warming in fungi.

00:25:54.319 --> 00:25:58.799
But I'm not really sure that's necessarily hit like the broader media of people thinking about this.

00:25:59.039 --> 00:26:09.839
Because beyond the development of thermal tolerance, one of these articles has this sort of wake-up call that a rapid increase in human fungal disease under climate change can be caused by shifting precipitation patterns.

00:26:09.920 --> 00:26:13.519
And it can also be caused by other ecological disturbances.

00:26:13.680 --> 00:26:20.559
And in some cases, there's even projections of like how might this actually cause these shifts and what might this look like.

00:26:20.720 --> 00:26:25.759
And increased precipitation, which we're seeing a lot of places and higher temperatures, as well as droughts.

00:26:25.920 --> 00:26:34.720
So all things we're seeing right now could more than double the endemic range of a fungal pathogen called cidiodomycosis, which is the soil fungi.

00:26:34.799 --> 00:26:37.839
It's colloquially known as valley fever when it's an infection.

00:26:38.079 --> 00:26:42.480
So that could double by 2100, the year 2100.

00:26:42.559 --> 00:26:45.119
So causing, so that's an increase in cases by 50%.

00:26:45.519 --> 00:26:49.039
So these are things that we should be thinking about, but that's a projection.

00:26:49.200 --> 00:26:58.160
And so what I want to talk about is one kind of example to round this out is that what's happening do so we know what's happening.

00:26:58.240 --> 00:26:58.480
Yeah.

00:26:58.720 --> 00:27:00.160
Camille, can I interrupt you?

00:27:00.240 --> 00:27:06.000
I just want to tell you that next time I see a fungus, next time I see a fungus on something, I'm gonna think of you.

00:27:06.720 --> 00:27:07.519
Oh, thank you.

00:27:07.680 --> 00:27:08.480
I appreciate that.

00:27:08.640 --> 00:27:10.319
That makes my heart happy.

00:27:10.960 --> 00:27:11.759
I'm honored.

00:27:13.680 --> 00:27:17.039
Let's go and like fungi and think of it.

00:27:18.160 --> 00:27:22.160
I'll be in fear that this fungus will just completely take over the world.

00:27:22.319 --> 00:27:25.599
And yeah, but I do uh disagree with you though.

00:27:25.839 --> 00:27:31.359
Look at the TV show The Last of Us, which is focused on uh uh fungus.

00:27:31.680 --> 00:27:38.160
So I I think there's growing awareness that that fungi could be could be a threat, right?

00:27:38.240 --> 00:27:42.160
So do you think that's just really a circle of a few scientists that talk about this?

00:27:42.480 --> 00:27:48.640
So I I think that's true, but I guess what I say what I mean, I don't think it's hit mainstream media in like a realistic way, right?

00:27:48.799 --> 00:27:50.079
It's almost like zombies, right?

00:27:50.319 --> 00:27:54.000
Yeah, has it like hit the broader spectrum of like media?

00:27:54.240 --> 00:27:55.359
Oh, look what could happen.

00:27:55.440 --> 00:28:00.240
But like it's again because it's I feel like The Last of Us really falls within that zombie pop cultural phenomenon.

00:28:00.319 --> 00:28:01.839
People are like, oh, that couldn't happen.

00:28:01.920 --> 00:28:05.119
And I'm like, oh, I don't think we're gonna become like zombies.

00:28:05.359 --> 00:28:07.119
You don't need to worry about becoming a clicker.

00:28:07.519 --> 00:28:16.480
I do think you need to be mindful of how these pathogens might be spreading because of human actions, which to me is far scarier than like any sort of like horror show.

00:28:17.519 --> 00:28:33.440
And it's really interesting, Camille, because like with the pattern that we see with you would think, right, that the warmer the planet is getting, and these fungus are not, I guess, evolved to survive in these warmer climates, you would think that they would, if anything, be dying off.

00:28:33.599 --> 00:28:47.839
But the fact that they have this ability to adapt, that just shows how like how not I guess evolutionized, but also how persistent and just like the survivability of these fungus.

00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:52.240
It's it's beyond what we even really consider when we think of fungus.

00:28:52.640 --> 00:28:55.440
And it's beyond what we understand, probably.

00:28:55.599 --> 00:28:56.720
Yeah, yeah, totally.

00:28:56.799 --> 00:29:03.359
And I'm gonna talk more too uh in when I talk about bacteria, I'm gonna talk about permafrost pathogens and how little we know.

00:29:03.519 --> 00:29:04.640
It's fascinating, anyways.

00:29:04.720 --> 00:29:05.119
Go ahead, man.

00:29:06.000 --> 00:29:13.279
Before you go on, Camille, I just want to ask you the same question that I asked Alex, and it's a question that you probably have no answer.

00:29:13.440 --> 00:29:16.799
I have no answer, but I'm just curious to ask.

00:29:16.960 --> 00:29:23.119
So, you know, you talked about like that that the fungi are mostly like infecting the skin, but they're also systemic infection.

00:29:23.279 --> 00:29:24.960
You mentioned belly fever, right?

00:29:25.039 --> 00:29:28.079
There's candida albicans and thrush and so on.

00:29:28.240 --> 00:29:46.640
And often when we have these systemic infections, typically, rule of thumb, the body is pretty good at avoiding fungal systemic infections unless there's some immunocompromised state or a co infection or maybe a poly trauma that reduces the immune system, correct?

00:29:46.960 --> 00:29:53.920
So now going back to the heat stress that humans will face in certain areas, and maybe even animals, right?

00:29:54.000 --> 00:29:56.640
Like we need to focus on humans.

00:29:57.039 --> 00:30:05.920
Could you imagine that this heat stress that also leads to maybe like immunocompromised states could also increase the susceptibility to those infections.

00:30:06.559 --> 00:30:08.319
Yeah, that's a really interesting thought question.

00:30:08.480 --> 00:30:20.079
And it's not something that I ran into when I was looking into this episode, but I think more than just heat though, I worry about other things that are occurring that we don't even think about.

00:30:20.480 --> 00:30:22.319
An example that I didn't even think about.

00:30:22.400 --> 00:30:25.599
So I said at the beginning of this episode, I'm up in upstate New York, right?

00:30:25.839 --> 00:30:30.079
At the beginning of the summer, we had smoke from the Canadian wildfires, which it's not great.

00:30:30.319 --> 00:30:33.920
You don't love it when you're outside and it's just being in a bonfire.

00:30:34.079 --> 00:30:50.720
But they did a study that in California hospitals between 2014 and 2018, research found that admissions for coccidodomycosis increase by 20% in the month following exposure to wildfire smoke because it can disperse fungal spores.

00:30:50.880 --> 00:31:03.680
So not even just heat, but these other climate change associated events, something like wildfires, which more and more people are being exposed to and that smoke can carry and can then disperse fungal spores with it.

00:31:03.920 --> 00:31:07.680
Do I have any idea what kind of fungi are chilling up in Canada?

00:31:07.839 --> 00:31:08.799
None whatsoever.

00:31:08.960 --> 00:31:11.519
Was I probably breathing some in with the wildfire smoke?

00:31:11.680 --> 00:31:11.839
Yeah.

00:31:12.000 --> 00:31:20.799
But are you saying this is fortunate to be but that's not necessarily the case and you wouldn't even think about it.

00:31:21.039 --> 00:31:24.400
I know so many people who are exposed to like California wildfire smoke.

00:31:24.480 --> 00:31:29.440
A really good friend of mine lost her whole house in the wildfire that we had this past summer.

00:31:29.599 --> 00:31:30.960
And that's utterly insane.

00:31:31.039 --> 00:31:32.400
And that's not even something people think about.

00:31:32.480 --> 00:31:42.240
They're just like, oh it's pollution right you're breathing this in I've never heard anyone talk about the fact that you could be inhaling fungal sports and that's going to increase hospital admissions in a system that might already be taxed, right?

00:31:42.319 --> 00:31:46.799
Because you have people that are coming in that are maybe have other issues.

00:31:46.960 --> 00:31:48.880
Are they even looking for fungi, right?

00:31:49.039 --> 00:31:52.240
Is a 20% increase real or is that underreported?

00:31:52.480 --> 00:31:58.559
Because your first thought probably is rarely fungi in people because again, there's not that many that infect us.

00:31:58.720 --> 00:32:08.720
But particularly in a system where maybe you've already seen a ton of people because the people are shifting and then there's stress and any other kinds of conditions can flare, you might not be thinking about it.

00:32:08.880 --> 00:32:14.640
And so I think that that's something I'm thinking about beyond just heat, like wildfires, but also deforestation.

00:32:14.799 --> 00:32:18.480
Alex mentioned what happens to mosquito populations when they're deforestation.

00:32:18.720 --> 00:32:32.799
As far back as the 1990s deforestation on Canada's Vancouver Island may have driven outbreaks of cryptocarcosis which is caused by the carcass gatty and it's due to logging releasing fungal spores into the environment and that's wild, right?

00:32:32.960 --> 00:32:40.799
So this idea that when we start disrupting nature, right, we run up against things that we didn't necessarily expect to find or didn't even think to think about.

00:32:41.039 --> 00:32:44.000
But back to your point on heat, because it's really interesting.

00:32:44.240 --> 00:32:51.920
One of the emerging threats which you mentioned it's one people might have heard of and that's candidauris, which is it's commonly associated with hospital outbreaks.

00:32:52.079 --> 00:32:53.119
It's a type of yeast.

00:32:53.279 --> 00:33:00.400
And it is actually though the first completely new fungal species hypothesized to have emerged due to climate change.

00:33:00.559 --> 00:33:08.640
And that is because there was simultaneous unexplained emergence of three types of Candidaoris on three continents so at once.

00:33:08.720 --> 00:33:12.000
And so that's why it's hypothesized to be because of climate change.

00:33:12.240 --> 00:33:18.480
So something that people were like oh it's a hospital infection but it's an infection that we all contributed to in many ways.

00:33:18.960 --> 00:33:27.920
Camille sounds like it's not only the last episode for you but also the last episode of this podcast because we all gonna die off Canada.

00:33:31.039 --> 00:33:32.480
I don't mean it like that.

00:33:32.640 --> 00:33:39.759
I want us to be aware but not like to the point where we're like oh fatalistic of the going to hell in a basket.

00:33:40.160 --> 00:33:46.160
Again like that's why I preface this episode with the small little like list of hopeful things we can do because it matters, right?

00:33:46.319 --> 00:33:56.480
But anyways to wrap up the fungal section, the last thing I want to say is that it concerns urban environments, which we haven't touched on yet, but they do matter in regards to what we're talking about with climate change.

00:33:56.559 --> 00:34:03.440
So urban environments have documented heat island effects which I had never heard of until I was researching this episode.

00:34:03.599 --> 00:34:08.639
So that means they're several degrees warmer than their surroundings due to factors like buildings and traffic.

00:34:08.800 --> 00:34:15.199
And so they might be contributing to the very thermodance that we don't want fungi to develop, which I thought was really interesting.

00:34:15.440 --> 00:34:16.800
So that's what I have on fungi.

00:34:17.039 --> 00:34:17.280
Yes.

00:34:17.679 --> 00:34:39.519
That's really fascinating especially I just I I just want to say I'm just still stuck on the as somebody who for a long time lived in northern Nevada and was oftentimes downwind of some of those fires in Northern California now I'm just wondering as far as all of the stuff I was exposed to like it might not just be Camille's last podcast it might be mine too at the night that we're going.

00:34:44.639 --> 00:34:47.280
You made it this far so it's all good.

00:34:47.519 --> 00:34:49.840
But I was thinking about the smoke and stuff like that.

00:34:50.079 --> 00:35:10.800
Like you Christina you probably would agree that not only does smoke apparently carry fungal spores which is news to me to be honest with you I know that virus particles can float on dust but I didn't know this but uh don't you think that Christina does that also this inhaled smoke also causes damage to your lungs and makes you more susceptible for other infections?

00:35:11.199 --> 00:35:21.760
That's what I was thinking of when Camille was talking about the smoke and everything and then I thought that's where she was going with all of this but yeah she surprised me with the turn she took there.

00:35:22.000 --> 00:35:25.840
I didn't realize that those colors were carried in the smoke itself.

00:35:25.920 --> 00:35:57.599
But what I was thinking of was the damage that the smoke does to your lungs inevitably in the future if you're exposed to that chronically if you're exposed to other insults chronically like tobacco smoke or anything like that will break down your lung tissue and result in a sort of not immunocompromised state of the lung but just result in insults to the lung tissue that will make it more susceptible to infection with just pathogens that we don't really think about a lot or pathogens that healthy lung tissue would be able to fight off on its own.

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So yeah I thought that was really interesting.

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I do want to say just as a disclaimer if you are a healthy individual and you have healthy lung tissue and you've inhaled spores or something like that for the most part thankfully our body's immune system is incredible and it's able to wall off these infections or it it fights off the infection without us really even knowing.

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So for our listeners don't be afraid that we're all gonna die but it is really focusing we're worrying about just new increased exposure to these fungal pathogens that we're being exposed to when we really didn't even think about it.

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Yeah absolutely yeah I wonder if it's like a double insult to yeah the smoke is already an insult to the lungs and so maybe you're become more susceptible but then also it's what's in that smoke that's carried right it's almost the perfect storm right like you've become more susceptible because you're probably stressed there's a wildfire near you you also are inhaling that smoke which is potentially quite damaging to the lungs.

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And then there's also what's contained within that smoke as far as something like fungal spores.

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