Morphological and molecular characterisation of Puccinia lagenophorae, now present in central North America

Abstract

In June 2004, a rust fungus not previously reported for Oklahoma was found occurring naturally on the weed, common groundsel, Senecio vulgaris, in pots in a commercial container nursery in northeastern Oklahoma. Host symptoms and morphology of teliospores and aeciospores of the fungus were consistent with those of Puccinia lagenophorae, a recent introduction into North America that has, as yet, been reported only on the East and West Coasts of the USA. This is the first report of the rust in central regions of North America. The rust is believed to be native to Australia and New Zealand and subsequently reported in most continents on numerous species and genera of the Asteraceae. Some authors in Europe consider the rust on Bellis as different from the one on Senecio, naming it Puccinia distincta. Our ITS1‐5.8S‐ITS2 ribosomal DNA sequence data, however, show homology with P. distincta sequences from Europe, indicating there is only one morphologically‐variable polyphagous species. Presumably, the rust was introduced into Oklahoma on infected plants from the West Coast of the USA, the source of most plant material in the commercial nursery where it was found. The rust is potentially important on several ornamental Asteraceae in North America as it has become in Europe, where it spreads rapidly throughout that continent following its introduction there in the early 1960s.

One stop shop: backbones trees for important phytopathogenic genera: I (2014)

“…The ITS region has successfully distinguished phylogenetic species in Uromyces (Barilli et al 2011) and it was used in combination with TEF to resolve the taxonomy of P. melampodii (Seier et al 2009). However, the ITS region was polymorphic in Puccinia lagenophorae (Littlefield et al 2005;Scholler et al 2011), and Morin et al (2009) discovered a paralagous copy of the ITS region, which may have resulted from a hybridization event. A paralagous copy of the ITS region was also reported in P. kuehnii in the study by Virtudazo et al (2001).…”

Rhamnus lycioides in Tunisia is a new aecial host of oat crown rust

“…The aeciospores were yellow, strongly verrucose, 22.5-32.5 Â 15-20 lm having a cell wall 2.5 lm thick. Cytoplasm and cell walls of these aeciospores showed a great morphological similarity to previously published descriptions of these spores (Weber and Davoli, 2002;Littlefield et al, 2005). Figure 4 illustrates aeciospores before and after germination in distilled water for 4 h at 20°C.…”

Life cycle and life strategy features of Puccinia glechomatis (Uredinales) favorable for extending the natural range of distribution

“…Interestingly, the spreading features of P. glechomatis bear a great resemblance to those of Puccinia lagenophorae Cooke (=P. distincta McAlpine), a species from Australia on species of Senecionae that was found first on the West Coast in 2000 , on the East Coast in 2002(Hernandez et al 2003, and in the central United States in Oklahoma in 2004 (Littlefield et al 2005), but not in regions between. The major host of P. lagenophorae is the common groundsel (Senecio vulgaris).…”