The effect of plant community structure on fungal diseases in natural ecosystems: progress, challenges, and perspective

Under global climate change and anthropogenic disturbances, elucidating the regulatory mechanisms of plant community structure on fungal disease dynamics in natural ecosystems holds critical importance. According to the classical “disease triangle” framework, the occurrence of plant diseases requires the simultaneous presence of three key elements: a pathogenic agent, a susceptible host, and conducive environmental conditions. In this article, we first review the mechanisms by which plant species richness, evenness, species composition, and litter affect fungal disease through both direct effects on fungal pathogens and indirect modulation of microclimate and soil properties, and recent advances are also reviewed. We then summarize the main challenges in this research field: the complexity of multi-host/multi-pathogen systems, the accuracy of fungal disease assessment, and methodological limitations. Finally, we discuss several promising future research directions, including the integration of interdisciplinary methods and big data analytics, interactions between fungal diseases and other biological groups, rapid evolutionary adaptation of fungal pathogens under global climate change, and impacts of fungal diseases on ecosystem functioning.