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To date, the mechanisms of these transitions from land to sea have remained poorly understood, and it is unclear what traits are associated with the specialization of a fungal to marine environments. Here we develop\n                  <jats:italic>Kluyveromyces<\/jats:italic>\n                  budding yeasts, sampled from terrestrial, estuarine, and marine niches, as a model for the evolutionary transition of fungi into the ocean. Comparative analyses of genomes from the genus revealed a contraction in genome size and gene number in aquatic\n                  <jats:italic>Kluyveromyces<\/jats:italic>\n                  compared to their terrestrial relatives. In laboratory culture, we uncovered evidence for phenotypic losses in aquatic\n                  <jats:italic>Kluyveromyces<\/jats:italic>\n                  species, namely desiccation and cold resistance relative to the terrestrial clade. Aquatic\n                  <jats:italic>Kluyveromyces<\/jats:italic>\n                  also exhibited better salt tolerance than terrestrial species, reflecting an evolutionary gain consonant with their provenance from seawater. Furthermore, in molecular-evolution analyses, we found robust signal for positive selection in the aquatic\n                  <jats:italic>Kluyveromyces<\/jats:italic>\n                  lineage, most notably at genes annotated for roles in oxidative stress. We interpret these results under a model in which the common ancestor of\n                  <jats:italic>Kluyveromyces<\/jats:italic>\n                  was terrestrial and first made a transition to estuaries and mangroves, leading to\n                  <jats:italic>K. siamensis<\/jats:italic>\n                  and\n                  <jats:italic>K. aestuarii<\/jats:italic>\n                  , which then primed further radiation into the marine niche, leading to\n                  <jats:italic>K. nonfermentans<\/jats:italic>\n                  . We propose that\n                  <jats:italic>Kluyveromyces<\/jats:italic>\n                  may be an ideal model to study these land-to-sea transitions.\n                <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.64898\/2026.06.22.733814","type":"posted-content","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,27]],"date-time":"2026-06-27T12:10:19Z","timestamp":1782562219000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Evolutionary insights into an ancient fungal transition from land to sea"],"prefix":"10.64898","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0006-0058-4319","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Kaylee E.","family":"Christensen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720"},{"name":"Pacific Biosciences Research Center, University of Hawai\u2019i at M\u0101noa, Honolulu, HI, 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