Found, among other places, in the guts of passalid beetles, S. stipitis is capable of both aerobic and oxygen limited fermentation, and has the highest known natural ability of any yeast to directly ferment xylose, converting it to ethanol, a potentially economically valuable trait.
This can be accomplished either by native xylose fermenting yeasts such as Scheffersomyces Pichia stipitis or by metabolically engineered strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
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Pichia stipitis is not as ethanol tolerant as the traditional ethanol producing yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.