Forest Pathology and Plant Health

Every year, a number of new forest pathosystems are discovered as the result of introduction of alien pathogens, host shifts and jumps, hybridization and recombination among pathogens, etc. Disease outbreaks may also be favored by climate change and forest management. The mechanisms driving the resurgence of native pathogens and the invasion of alien ones need to be better understood in order to draft sustainable control strategies. For this Special Issue, we welcome population biology studies providing insights on the epidemiology and invasiveness of emergent forest pathogens possibly by contrasting different scenarios varying in pathogen and host populations size, genetics, phenotype and phenology, landscape fragmentation, occurrence of disturbances, management practices, etc. Both experimental and monitoring approaches are welcome. In summary, this special issue focuses on how variability in hosts, pathogens, or ecology may affect the emergence of new threats to plant species

Molecular analyses to study invasions by forest pathogens: examples from Mediterranean ecosystems

Biological invasions by plants and animals have been the subject of several review papers, but invasions by plant pathogens have only occasionally been described and reviewed. The present paper discusses exotic plant diseases whose epidemiology has been clarified using molecular analysis. Because the list of all exotic plant diseases is quite large, this review focuses on forest diseases caused by exotic microbes in Mediterranean ecosystems. In particular, the contribution of molecular studies on exotic forest diseases in favour of or against general invasion biology theory is highlighted. The review follows different phases of the invasion process, giving examples of particular diseases/pathogens for which characteristics have been analyzed