A dynamic online documentation of Italian ascomycetes with hosts and substrates: www.italianmicrofungi.org

Abstract

Early taxonomic studies of ascomycetous microfungi were conducted based on morphological observations. With the advent and advancement of DNA based molecular studies over the last few decades, species, genera, families and orders of Ascomycota have been subjected to rapid taxonomic changes. In the last eight years, we have introduced many novel fungal taxa with numerous new host and country records of ascomycetous microfungi from Italy. Dothideomycetes and Sordariomycetes are the major classes that we have investigated. These fungal species were collected from more than 300 host species in terrestrial habitats of different provinces in Italy. The hosts include shrubs, trees and grasses with the substrates differentiated as branches, stems and leaves. For these taxa, identification and classification were confirmed with comprehensive descriptions, colour illustrations and multi-gene phylogenetic analyses. These studies are scattered in different scientific journals. The online documentation at www.italianmicrofungi.org is a database for arranging all the published data together with novel updates of present and upcoming studies. Notes for species, genera and up-to-date records of Italian ascomycetes with accounts on different hosts and substrates are described here. This website provides a user-friendly and easily accessible framework to extract more information.