No need for speed : slow development of fungi in extreme environments

Gostinčar, Cene (author), Zalar, Polona (author), Gunde-Cimerman, Nina (author)

Microbial growth under extreme conditions is often slow. This is partly because large amounts of energy are diverted into cellular mechanisms that allow survival under hostile conditions. Because this challenge is universal and diversity in extreme environments is low compared to non-extreme environments, slow-growing microorganisms are not overgrown by other species. In some cases, especially when nutrients are scarce, slow growth was even shown to increase stress tolerance. And in at least some species of extremotolerant and extremophilic fungi, growth rate appears to be coupled with their very unusual morphologies, which in turn may be an adaptation to extreme conditions. However, there is more than one strategy of survival in extreme environments. Fungi that thrive in extremes can be divided into (i) ubiquitous and polyextremotolerant generalists and (ii) rarely isolated specialists with narrow ecological amplitudes. While generalists can compete with mesophilic species, specialists cannot. When adapting to extreme conditions, the risk of an evolutionary trade-off in the form of reduced fitness under mesophilic conditions may limit the maximum stress tolerance achievable by polyextremotolerant generalists. At the same time, specialists are rarely found in mesophilic environments, which allows them to evolve to ever greater extremotolerance, since a reduction of mesophilic fitness is likely to have little impact on their evolutionary success.

• Language: English
• Keywords: extreme environments, extremotolerance, generalist, halotolerance, slow growth, specialist, biology
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.02 - Review Article
• Organization: BF - Biotechnical Faculty
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2022
• Number of pages: Str. 1-14
• Numbering: Vol. 39
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-138849
• UDC: 579
• ISSN on article: 1749-4613
• DOI: 10.1016/j.fbr.2021.11.002
• COBISS.SI-ID: 103798787
• Publication date in RUL: 23.08.2022

GOSTINČAR, Cene, ZALAR, Polona and GUNDE-CIMERMAN, Nina, 2022, No need for speed : slow development of fungi in extreme environments. Fungal biology reviews [online]. 2022. Vol. 39, p. 1–14. [Accessed 23 April 2025]. DOI 10.1016/j.fbr.2021.11.002. Retrieved from: https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/IzpisGradiva.php?lang=eng&id=138849

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Fungal biology reviews
• Publisher: Elsevier, British Mycological Society
• ISSN: 1749-4613
• COBISS.SI-ID: 519678489

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: ekstremofilne glive, ekstremotoleranca, hitrost rasti, ekstremna okolja