Eight new Elaphomyces species (Elaphomycetaceae, Eurotiales, Ascomycota) from eastern North America

Abstract

The hypogeous, sequestrate ascomycete genus Elaphomyces is one of the oldest known truffle-like genera. Elaphomyces has a long history of consumption by animals in Europe and was formally described by Nees von Esenbeck in 1820 from Europe. Until recently most Elaphomyces specimens in North America were assigned names of European taxa due to lack of specialists working on this group and difficulty of using pre-modern species descriptions. It has recently been discovered that North America has a rich diversity of Elaphomyces species far beyond the four Elaphomyces species described from North America prior to 2012. We describe eight new Elaphomyces species (E. dalemurphyi, E. dunlapii, E. holtsii, E. lougehrigii, E. miketroutii, E. roodyi, E. stevemilleri and E. wazhazhensis) of eastern North America that were collected in habitats from Quebec, Canada south to Florida, USA, west to Texas and Iowa. The ranges of these species vary and with continued sampling may prove to be larger than we have established. Castellano has studied authentic material of all European Elaphomyces species published through 2016 and it is interesting to note that many Elaphomyces species from eastern North America have morphological similarities but with distinct morphological differences to a number of European Elaphomyces species.