A phylogenetic revision of Penicillium sect. Exilicaulis, including nine new species from fynbos in South Africa

Abstract

A survey of the fynbos biome in South Africa resulted in the isolation of 61 Penicillium species from Protea repens infructescences, air, and soil samples. Fourteen of these belong to Penicillium sect. Exilicaulis and therefore we considered it an opportunity to re-evaluate the taxonomy of the section. Phylogenetic comparisons of the ITS, β-tubulin, calmodulin and RPB2 gene regions of the 76 section Exilicaulis species, revealed 52 distinct species, including nine new species from fynbos. Morphological comparisons confirmed the novelty for most of these, however, new species closely related to P. rubefaciens did not show significant or consistent morphological differences and we thus placed a bias on phylogenetic data applying the Genealogical Concordance Phylogenetic Species Recognition (GCPSR) concept. In this paper we describe the nine new species and update the accepted species list and resolve synonyms in the section. Importantly, we reveal that P. citreosulfuratum is the correct name for the clade previously considered to represent P. toxicarium fide Serra et al. (2008).The nine new species are: Penicillium atrolazulinum, P. consobrinum, P. cravenianum, P. hemitrachum, P. pagulum, P. repensicola, P. momoii, P. subturcoseum, and P. xanthomelinii spp. nov.

Diversity of xerotolerant and xerophilic fungi in honey

“…The minimum a w reported for the growth of P. camemberti, P. citrinum and P. corylophilum was around 0.80 (Abellana et al 2001;Fontana 2008;Kalai et al 2017). Penicillium cravenianum, a species moderately xerotolerant (grows on G25 N), has only been reported in soil (Visagie et al 2016). Notably, all the isolates of Talaromyces that we found in honey belonged to three unrecognized species.…”

Penicillium hermansii, a new species causing smoky mould in white button mushroom production

“…Nine smoky mould isolates were included in this analysis and those isolates form a unique clade within section Exilicaulis. Two well-supported clades are present in this section and the smoky mould strains group in a cluster previously named the Penicillium parvum-clade (Visagie et al 2016). Penicillium canis and P. striatisporum are basal to the clade containing the smoky mould isolates; however, statistical support is lacking.…”

“…A concatenated dataset with BenA, CaM and RPB2 sequences including nine smoky mould strains was generated and used to determine the phylogenetic relationship of the smoky mould strains with other members of Penicillium section Exilicaulis. Single gene phylogenies were made by combining the generated sequences from smoky mould isolates with sequences of strains belonging to the P. parvum-clade (Visagie et al 2016) of sect. Exilicaulis.…”

Chrysoviruses Inhabited Symbiotic Fungi of Lichens

“…Newly growing fungi were picked and cultivated individually on fresh PDA plates and used for dsRNA extraction, RT-PCR virus detection, and hybridization. Penicillium citreosulfuratum from the P. citreonigrum clade [33] was identified as the host of CcCV1, inasmuch as RT-PCR with virus-specific primers gave products of expected size ( Figure 8B) and the fungus reacted with the Cy3-859 probe ( Figure 8D-G). The transmission of CcCV1 is uncertain.…”