**Preface to "Biodiversity, Distribution and Conservation of Plants and Fungi; Effects of Global Warming and Environmental Stress"**

The estimation of global biodiversity and its conservation is an old, but still unresolved, concern in biology. On the one hand, the number of described species is constantly increasing, especially with the accumulation of modern morphological and molecular data; on the other hand, the existence of many species is threatened due to environmental and anthropogenic pressures.

Plants and fungi are essential components of the ecosystem and are widely used by humanity. However, fungi are much understudied in many aspects in comparison with animals and plants. They are also poorly represented in national and international red lists; i.e., there are only 550 species of fungi in the IUCN Red List, while Plantae have more than 58,300 and Animalia—more than 83,600 species. This is due to a significant lack of knowledge in fungal biodiversity and distribution, especially in tropical areas. There are no comprehensive studies on how global climate changes affect fungi and their interactions with plants.

The goal of this Special Issue is to highlight the research concerning subjects related to biodiversity and the conservation of fungi and plants, plant–fungal interactions, the effects of global warming, pollution, parasites, and other abiotic factors affecting their conservation, as well as phylogenetic, genomic, and transcriptomic studies with the direction of biodiversity estimation and gene expression studies related to environmental stressors.

> **Anush Kosakyan, Rodica Catana, and Alona Yu. Biketova** *Editors*
