Astrosphaeriella is polyphyletic, with species in Fissuroma gen. nov., and Neoastrosphaeriella gen. nov.

Abstract

Collections of fungi from bamboo and palm plants in Thailand resulted in the identification of several species of Astrosphaeriella, including the type species A. fusispora, which is a synonym of A. stellata. Species of Astrosphaeriella have been previously circumscribed on the basis of morphology and, to a lesser extent, on host affiliation. In order to obtain a phylogenetic understanding of the genus, eleven strains of Astrosphaeriella sensu lato were sequenced in this study. Molecular analyses based on a combined dataset of 18S and 28S nrDNA sequences were carried out to infer the phylogenetic placement of these strains in the Pleosporales. The phylogenetic analyses showed that Astrosphaeriella is polyphyletic, with Astrosphaeriella species clustering in four clades, two clades, including species with slit-like ostioles, clustered in Aigialaceae; the clade that includes the generic type clustered together with Delitschia; and A. Africana, which has striate ascospores, deviated from these three clades and had a basal position in the Pleosporales. A new combination in Fissuroma gen. nov. and new genus Neoastrosphaeriella are introduced in Aigialaceae to include the species with slit-like ascomata.

Phylogeny and morphology of Premilcurensis gen. nov. (Pleosporales) from stems of Senecio in Italy

“…The first 890 trees which contained the burn-in phase of the analyses were discarded. The remaining 3,560 trees were used to calculate the posterior probabilities (PP) in the majority rule consensus tree (Liu et al 2011). The setup details of the phylogenetic analysis follow Liu et al (2012), Phookamsak et al (2014), and Hyde et al (2013) Phylogenetic trees were figured in TreeView (Page 1996).…”

Phallus haitangensis, a new species of stinkhorn from Yunnan Province, China

“…The first 980 trees which contained the burn-in phase of the analyses were discarded. The remaining 2,560 trees were used to calculate the posterior probabilities (PP) in the majority rule consensus tree (Liu et al 2011). The best tree was viewed in FigTree and edited in Adobe Illustrator CS5.…”

Bambusicola loculata sp. nov. (Bambusicolaceae) from bamboo

“…Alignments were checked and manual adjustments were carried out when necessary. In the analyses, gaps were treated as missing data, and all characters were unordered and of equal weight (Begoude et al 2010, Liu et al 2011. Single gene is not well support to investigate the phylogenetic relationships of Dothideomycetes taxa, however, multi-gene analyses are usually considered to be used by mycologists (Zhang et al 2009, Hyde et al 2013, Lui et al 2014, Wijayawardene et al 2014.…”