Laboulbeniales (Ascomycota) of the Boston Harbor Islands I: Species Parasitizing Coccinellidae and Staphylinidae, with Comments on Typification

Abstract

-This paper, based on a recent comprehensive sampling of insects, is the first report of Laboulbeniales from the New England region since the 1930s. We present 7 new records of laboulbenialean parasites on Staphylinidae (rove beetles) and Coccinellidae (lady beetles) from the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. These are Clonophoromyces nipponicus Terada & I.I. Tav., Hesperomyces virescens Thaxt., Ilyomyces cf. mairei F. Picard, Laboulbenia philonthi Thaxt., Peyritschiella protea Thaxt., Stichomyces conosomatis Thaxt., and Teratomyces actobii Thaxt. One of these parasite species, C. nipponicus, has not been found previously outside of its type locality in Japan. Examination of Roland Thaxter's 1891-1932 slides led to the designation of lectotypes for L. philonthi, P. protea, S. conosomatis, and T. actobii. The following synonymy is established: Teratomyces brevicaulis Thaxt. = T. actobii. In addition, we discovered new localities for H. virescens (from Canada, Cuba, Guatemala, and Japan) and L. philonthi (from Canada, Grenada, Panama, Trinidad, and Venezuela).

The effect of Rickia wasmannii (Ascomycota, Laboulbeniales) on the aggression and boldness of Myrmica scabrinodis (Hymenoptera, Formicidae)

“…Since infection by the fungus appears to be permanent (Haelewaters et al 2015c, AT and FB pers. observ.…”

Online image databases as multi-purpose resources: discovery of a new host ant of Rickia wasmannii Cavara (Ascomycota, Laboulbeniales) by screening AntWeb.org

“…specioides Bondroit, 1918;M. spinosior Santschi, 1931;and M. vandeli Bondroit, 1920(De Kesel et al 2016, Haelewaters et al 2015a, 2015c to ten by M. hellenica (this paper).…”

“…Haelewaters et al 2015a), the strong attachment of Laboulbeniales thalli to the host (Tragust et al 2016) may last for decades even in the case of dried host specimens. To test whether the mode of host collection and initial conservation affects the appearance of the fungal infection, we killed infected hosts previously collected in Hungary (Pfliegler et al 2016) by freezing or with ethanol or chloroform then mounted them on pins.…”

“…Examining biological samples in these collections may also reveal previously unrecorded associations between different species (Frey et al 1992), e.g. in the case of parasites that remain observable and identifiable after the host is conserved and deposited (Haelewaters et al 2015a). Among the Fungi, this approach in recording parasites' distributions and host associations have been applied in the case of plant-infecting fungi (e.g.…”

“…Thaxter 1924, Haelewaters and Rossi 2015, 2017, Santamaria et al 2016, Wang et al 2016 or presenting new distributional and host association records (e.g. Weir and Hammond 1997, Báthori et al 2014, Haelewaters et al 2014, 2015a, 2017. Records of parasitic fungi have also originated from photo-sharing websites such as Flickr and iNaturalist (e.g.…”