Brahmaculus gen. nov. (Leotiomycetes, Chlorociboriaceae)

Abstract

A second genus in Chlorociboriaceae is described here as Brahmaculusgen. nov. Macroscopically distinctive, all species have bright yellow apothecia with several apothecial cups held on short branches at the tip of a long stipe. The genus is widely distributed across the Southern Hemisphere; the four new species described here include two from Chile (B. magellanicussp. nov., B. osornoensissp. nov.) and one each from New Zealand (B. moonlighticussp. nov.) and Australia (B. packhamiaesp. nov.). They differ from species referred to Chlorociboria, the only other genus in Chlorociboriaceae, in their terrestrial habitat and ascomata that are noticeably more hairy than the known Chlorociboria species, most of which have apothecia with short, macroscopically indistinct hair-like elements. Based on our analyses, Chlorociboria as accepted here is paraphyletic. Additional study is needed to clarify where alternative, monophyletic generic limits should be drawn and how these genera may be recognised morphologically. Also described here are three new Chlorociboria spp. from New Zealand (C. metrosiderisp. nov., C. solandrisp. nov., C. subtilissp. nov.), distinctive in developing on dead leaves rather than wood and in two of them not forming the green pigmentation characteristic of most Chlorociboria species. New Zealand specimens previously incorrectly identified as Chlorociboria argentinensis are provided with a new name, C. novae-zelandiaesp. nov.

Four new species of Chlorociboria from Yunnan, China

“…Besides, the nal average standard deviation of the split frequencies in the BI analysis based on the combine of ITS and LSU was 0.008298. The topology of the multilocus ML tree was partly similar to the BI analysis and also to the previous study of Johnston et al (2021) and Li et al (2022). The two single-gene Bayesian phylogenetic trees and the two single-gene Maximum likelihood phylogenetic trees all con rmed our eight specimens in this study constituted four monophyletic lineages, which were distant from other known species of Chlorociboria.…”

“…These newly generated sequences and the reference sequences from previous research are shown in Table 1. Cenangium ferruginosum (TAAM 198451), Chlorencoelia torta (KUS-F 52256) and Heyderia abietis (OSC 60392) were designated as outgroup taxa following Johnston et al (2021). The dataset for each gene region was aligned using MAFFT 7.49, then was trimmed in TrimAl 1.3, the gapthreshold parameter of ITS was set to 0.6, and the gapthreshold parameter of LSU was set to 0.4 (Capella-Gutiérrez et al 2009; Katoh and Standley 2013).…”

“…Brahmaculus species have macroscopically distinctive features and possess yellow apothecia, arranged with several apothecia on short branches at the tip of a long stipe, which distinguishes it from Chlorociboria species. In contrast to Brahmaculus species, most Chlorociboria members have hairlike elements, a character that is absent in Brahmaculus species (Johnston et al 2021).…”

“…Johnston et al (2021) andLi et al (2022). In addition, seven species lacked reliable sequences, limiting the information obtained by combining morphology and phylogeny.…”