The Evolutionary Microbiology group aims to gain fundamental insights into understand how fungal pathogens cause disease in their plant hosts. To this end, we study the mechanisms of pathogenicity and virulence and how such mechanisms evolved and continue to evolve. This research is performed in the context of the plant as a “holobiont’, i.e. an assemblage of host plants and their immune systems, but also of many other species that live in or around the plant and contribute in some way to its functioning.