Morphology and molecular analyses reveal three new species of Botryosphaeriales isolated from diseased plant branches in China

Abstract

The Botryosphaeriales represents an ecologically diverse group of fungi, comprising endophytes, saprobes, and plant pathogens. In this study, taxonomic analyses were conducted based on morphological characteristics and phylogenetic analyses of multi-gene sequence data from four loci (ITS, LSU, tef1-α, and tub2). Thirteen isolates obtained from Beijing and Yunnan Province were identified as seven species of Botryosphaeriales, including Aplosporella javeedii, Dothiorella alpina, Phaeobotryon aplosporum and Ph. rhois, and three previously undescribed species, namely Aplosporella yanqingensis, Dothiorella baihuashanensis, and Phaeobotryon platycladi. Additionally, the new records of Dothiorella alpina from the host species Populus szechuanica, Phaeobotryon aplosporum from Juglans mandshurica, and Phaeobotryon rhois from Populus alba var. pyramidalis are included.

Morpho-Phylogenetic Evidence Reveals Novel Species and New Records of Botryosphaeriaceae in China and Thailand

“…Studies on Botryosphaeriaceae, dealing with the phylogenetic traits and morphology of isolates associated with various hosts, have increased in recent years, enabling the worldwide identification of taxa at the species level [2,5,18,[45][46][47][48][49]. In this study, 16 Botryosphaeriaceae isolates were obtained from several decaying woody hosts (dead arial twigs, branches, stems, bark, and seed pods) in southwestern China and northern Thailand, and they were identified as 11 species based on a polyphasic approach of morphological features and molecular phylogeny.…”

“…Dothiorella was introduced by Saccardo [53] with Do. pyrenophora as the type species, and presently, only 38 species are accepted in this genus based on phylogenetic analyses [16,18,49]. Zhang et al [48] made a systematic revision of Dothiorella by synonymizing 15 known species, which reduced the number of Dothiorella members and established a more stable systematic relationship.…”

“…Subsequently, Kirk et al [14] estimated 26 genera within the family Botryosphaeriaceae, while Liu et al [4] reevaluated the family and recognized 29 genera. Up to date, 22 genera with more than 200 species are accepted within the family, based on morphology and molecular evidence [2,[15][16][17][18].…”

Supplementary material 2 from: Wu Y, Peng C, Yuan R, Zhang M, Hu Y, Tian C (2024) New species and records of Botryosphaeriales (Dothideomycetes) associated with tree dieback in Beijing, China. MycoKeys 106: 225-250. https://doi.org/10.3897/mycokeys.106.122890

“…The sequences obtained were assembled using SeqMan v. 7.1.0 software, and reference sequences from related publications (Phillips et al 2019;Lin et al 2023a;Wu et al 2023) were retrieved from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov).…”

“…Pan et al (2019) found that Phaeobotryon rhois and Diplodia quercicola were detrimental to Rhus typhina and Quercus variabilis separately in Yudu Mountain, Beijing. Aplosporella yanqingensis and Dothiorella baihuashan are mainly recorded on Pinaceae or Cupressaceae (Lin et al 2023a). Lasiodiplodia regiae caused the canker and dieback of apple trees (Wang et al 2023).…”