Tree Killer, Qu'est-ce Que C'est? Insights From Forest Pathogen Genomes.
Forests are central to planetary health but are increasingly challenged by emerging diseases driven by climate change, global trade, and anthropogenic disturbance. Despite the apparent resilience of long-lived, genetically diverse tree hosts, forest ecosystems have repeatedly experienced landscape-level pathogen-driven transformations. Advances in genomics, transcriptomics, and functional biology have transformed our understanding of how fungal and oomycete pathogens interact with their hosts across a continuum of lifestyles, from saprotrophy and necrotrophy to biotrophy. Here, we synthesize insights from comparative and population genomics and functional studies across diverse forest pathosystems to examine the traits that characterize successful tree pathogens. We highlight how lifestyle plasticity, adaptations to woody tissues, vector-mediated transmission, and biotrophic stealth enable pathogens to colonize perennial hosts and persist over long temporal scales. We further examine how genome plasticity, hybridization, and horizontal gene transfer generate adaptive potential that often outpaces host evolutionary responses under current environmental change. Finally, we discuss emerging genomic tools, including biosurveillance, machine learning-based classification, and genome editing, that are beginning to link genotype to phenotype and inform assessments of disease risk. By integrating genomic, ecological, and evolutionary perspectives, this review outlines general principles governing forest pathogen success and identifies priorities for future research aimed at improving understanding, early detection, and management of forest diseases in a changing world.