Taxonomy and Phylogeny Reveal Two New Potential Edible Ectomycorrhizal Mushrooms of Thelephora from East Asia

Abstract

The ectomycorrhizal basidiomycetes genus Thelephora has been understudied in subtropical ecosystems. Many species of Thelephora are important edible and medicinal fungi, with substantial economic value. Two new Thelephora species, T. grandinioides and T. wuliangshanensis spp. nov. are proposed here based on a combination of morphological features and molecular evidence. Thelephora grandinioides is characterized by laterally stipitate basidiocarps with a grandinoid hymenial surface, a monomitic hyphal system with clamped generative hyphae, and the presence of tubular and septated cystidia and subglobose to globose basidiospores measuring as 5.3–7.4 × 4–6.5 µm. Thelephora wuliangshanensis is characterized by infundibuliform basidiocarps, radially black striate on the pileus, a smooth, umber to coffee hymenial surface, a monomitic hyphal system with thick-walled generative hyphae, and basidiospores that turn greenish grey to buff in 5% KOH. Phylogenetic analyses of rDNA internal transcribed spacer region (ITS) and nuclear large subunit region (nrLSU) showed that the two new Thelephora are phylogenetically distinct: T. grandinioides is sister to T. aurantiotincta and T. sikkimensis, while T. wuliangshanensis is sister to a clade comprising T. austrosinensis and T. aurantiotincta with high support as well.

Molecular phylogeny and morphology reveal four new species of Thelephora (Thelephorales, Basidiomycota) from subtropical China, closely related to T. ganbajun

“…The combined 143 ITS + nLSU + mtSSU sequences representing 41 taxa were used to build phylogenetic trees; 73 sequences of Thelephora were newly generated, 70 sequences were downloaded from GenBank ( Table 1 ), including eight sequences of Tomentella . Odontia ferruginea was used as the outgroup (Ramírez-López et al, 2015 ; Vizzini et al, 2016 ; Khalid and Hanif, 2017 ; Das et al, 2018 ; Yuan et al, 2018 ; Li et al, 2020 ; Liu et al, 2021 ; Borovička et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Nevertheless, Th. grandinioides can be differentiated by a fawn to isabelline abhymenial surface, a grandinoid, olivaceous buff to the clay-buff hymenial surface when fresh, as well as the presence of cystidia (Liu et al, 2021 ). Th.…”

“…Nevertheless, Th. grandinioides can be differentiated by a fawn to isabelline abhymenial surface, a grandinoid, olivaceous buff to clay-buff hymenial surface, as well as the presence of cystidia (Liu et al, 2021). Basidiocarp: Upright, usually solitary, small to medium-sized, up to 4 cm high and 3 cm wide, coriaceous when fresh, tastes mild, almost no odor when dried.…”

“…Several studies have provided an ITS or ITS + LSU phylogenetic overview of the genus (Ramírez-López et al, 2015;Vizzini et al, 2016;Das et al, 2018;Li et al, 2020), based on species from the northern temperate and tropical regions of Asia, Europe, and North America (Ramírez-López et al, 2013, 2015Khalid and Hanif, 2017;Das et al, 2018;Li et al, 2020). To date, 21 species of Thelephora have been recorded from China (Teng, 1934;Li et al, 2020;Liu et al, 2021), and most of them were identified based on themorphological comparison in the last century, and reference to taxonomy and phylogeny of this genus is extremely scarce. Meanwhile, most of the identifications are from molecular sequences without morphological study in the new century.…”

Three New Species of Absidia (Mucoromycota) from China Based on Phylogeny, Morphology and Physiology

“…Currently, an increasing number of studies focus on fungal diversity and ecological distribution [3,4,[42][43][44][45][46][47][48], which provides a foundation to deeply understand the kingdom Fungi. Although a total of 46 species are described in Absidia, their ecological distribution has still not been unraveled.…”