{"paper_id":"23e51801-0f4a-4a67-bd14-5c50f39074b4","body_text":"This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 2 of this Preprint.\nYou must log in to post a comment.\nThere are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.\nThis is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 2 of this Preprint.\nAdd a Comment\nYou must log in to post a comment.\nComments\nThere are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.\nMycorrhizal fungi are essential to ecosystem functioning but have been overlooked in conservation agendas due to data limitations and a historical focus on plants and animals. We present the first global, species-level assessment of the area-based conservation of mycorrhizal fungi. Using 16.5 million site-by-taxon presence–absence records, we created high-resolution range maps for 189 arbuscular mycorrhizal and 2,669 ectomycorrhizal species hypotheses. By intersecting these range maps with protected areas, we show that arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are less protected than expected by random chance, and both guilds are less protected than terrestrial mammals. We explored the Species Protection Index (SPI) as another conservation metric and found it sensitive to predicted range size. Nonetheless, the SPI framework can be used with our maps to monitor and inform mycorrhizal fungal habitat protection. Our findings highlight the value of species-level spatial data in fungal conservation planning to mitigate extinction risks associated with habitat loss.\nhttps://doi.org/10.32942/X2NH12\nEcology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies\nspecies conservation, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, ectomycorrhizal fungi, terrestrial mammals, Species Protection Index, protected areas, location bias, species distribution modeling, environmental DNA, fungal biogeography, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, ectomycorrhizal fungi, terrestrial mammals, Species Protection Index, Protected areas, location bias, species distribution modeling, environmental DNA, fungal biogeography\nPublished: 2025-08-31 11:45\nLast Updated: 2025-08-31 11:45\nCC BY Attribution 4.0 International\nConflict of interest statement:\nETK is a co-founder of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), a non-governmental organization that conducts research on mycorrhizal fungi for conservation and restoration.\nData and Code Availability Statement:\nAll code used for analysis will be made publicly available on a digital repository upon acceptance of this manuscript.\nLanguage:\nEnglish","source_license":"CC-BY-4.0","license_restricted":false}