Coccidioides

Valley fever, or coccidioidomycosis, is a lung infection that people get when they breathe in spores of the fungus, coccidioides, that lives in dry soil, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Bruhn said she hadn’t been warned beforehand that Kern County and Buena Vista Lake are endemic for coccidioides — the fungus that causes the disease.

Valley fever is an infectious disease caused by the coccidioides fungus, which grows in the soil and dirt in some areas of California.

English said little attention has yet been paid to his group’s discovery on the site of the soil-dwelling fungus Coccidioides, which causes valley fever.

This may be one way Coccidioides has expanded into the Pacific Northwest from the southwestern states, such as California, Arizona and New Mexico, where it is endemic.