New records of the Cryphonectriaceae from southern Africa includingLatruncellus auroraegen. sp. nov.

Abstract

The Cryphonectriaceae accommodates some of the world's most important tree pathogens, including four genera known from native and introduced Myrtales in Africa. Surveys in the past 3 y in southern Africa have led to the discovery of cankers with fruiting structures resembling those of the Cryphonectriaceae on trees in the Myrtales in Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Zambia. These fungi were identified with morphological characteristics and DNA sequence data. For the first time we report Chrysoporthe austroafricana from Namibia and on Syzygium guineense and Holocryphia eucalypti in Swaziland on a Eucalyptus grandis clone. The host and geographic ranges of Celoporthe dispersa are expanded to include S. legatti in South Africa and S. guineense in Zambia. In addition a monotypic genus, Latruncellus aurorae gen. sp. nov., is described from Galpinia transvaalica (Lythraceae, Myrtales) in Swaziland. The present and other recent studies clearly emphasize the limited understanding of the diversity and distribution of fungi in the Cryphonectriaceae in Africa.

Endophytic Cryphonectriaceae on native Myrtales: Possible origin of Chrysoporthe canker on plantation-grown Eucalyptus

“…Thus, placing branch samples with considerable surface area into moistened florist foam, allowing the samples to dry out slowly over a number of months, stimulated the Cryhonectriaceae present to develop and sporulate. This would also explain previous observations where the Cryphonectriaceae have often be found sporulating on branch stubs and dead bark of native trees (Vermeulen et al 2011).…”

“…Celoporthe woodiana is a recently described species, which prior to the present study, was known only from the non-native garden-tree Tibouchina granulosa in South Africa (Vermeulen et al 2011). It has, however, also been shown to infect Syzygium and Eucalyptus species in artificial inoculation studies (Vermeulen et al 2011).…”

“…Of these, C. austroafricana has previously been reported from Eucalyptus species in Mozambique (Nakabonge et al 2006;Roux et al 2005) and is most likely native to Africa (Heath et al , 2006Nakabonge et al 2006;Vermeulen et al 2011). Chrysoporthe austroafricana is also known to occur on Eucalyptus spp.…”

“…However, attempts to isolate these fungi as endophytes by Vermeulen et al (2011) were not successful. This might be explained by the fact that isolations on agar could have been overgrown by more rapidly developing fungi such as for example the Botryosphaeriaceae, which are common endophytes in Angiosperm trees including the Myrtales (Pavlic et al 2007;Roux et al 2000Roux et al , 2001Smith et al 1996b;Slippers and Wingfield 2007 (Gryzenhout et al 2004;Rodas et al 2005;Wingfield et al 2001).…”

“…Chrysoporthe austroafricana is also known to occur on Eucalyptus spp. in Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia (Nakabonge et al 2006;Roux et al 2005), non-native Tibouchina in South Africa (Myburg et al 2002) and native Syzygium in South Africa (Heath et al 2006), Zambia (Chungu et al 2010) and Namibia (Vermeulen et al 2011).…”