ABSTRACT
Forests are the prevailing and most dynamic terrestrial ecosystems on our earth, and despite all of the cumulative knowledge on the forest diseases that threaten them, every year a number of novel ‘pathosystems’ are revealed as a result of the introduction of exotic pathogens, hybridization, host shifts and jumps, and recombination among pathogens, etc. Additionally, current predictions on trends caused by climate change suggest that the incidence of some diseases will rise, while some may decline (Pautasso et al., 2012); but as the climate becomes less optimal for forests, it is inevitable that we will witness an emergence of diseases that currently are regarded as insignificant or secondary.
