Abstract
The genus Anthracocystis (Ustilaginales, Ustilaginaceae) was recently reinstated for grass-infecting species of smut fungi that have sori with a peridium composed of mostly fungal cells, filiform or slender columellae, persistent spore balls usually composed of dimorphic spores, and lacking sterile cells between spore balls. In this study, Anthracocystis grodzinskae sp. nov. on Euclasta condylotricha is described and illustrated from the Sudanian savanna biome in Benin (West Africa). The new species is compared with two other smut fungi known on Euclasta condylotricha, namely Sporisorium euclastae and Anthracocystis ischaemoides, in Zambia. It differs from these species in a number of morphological characters that are discussed in detail. The systematic position of A. grodzinskae was investigated in a phylogenetic analysis with a concatenated supermatrix of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and large subunit (LSU) regions of ribosomal DNA. The dataset included all representatives of Anthracocystis for which sequences were available in the National Center for Biotechnology Information's (NCBI’s) GenBank and that were linked to reliably identified source specimens, related yeast species, and unnamed yeast strains or environmental sequences. The phylogenetic hypothesis derived from the dataset is intended to serve as a backbone tree for Anthracocystis. 19 ITS and 13 LSU sequences were tracked to represent sequences generated from type specimens (holotypes, isotypes or paratypes). These type sequences are recommended to be deposited in the RefSeq Targeted Loci database. This study provides the first explicit evidence that several asexual species are nested within the Anthracocystis lineage. The yeast sequences were scattered in different subclades of Anthracocystis and none of them could be directly assigned to a teleomorphic species. Only one of these yeast anamorphs was assigned to a species, namely Pseudozyma flocculosa. In line with the current code of nomenclature, and following recent practice of merging yeast species with sexual species under the older generic name, this yeast is recombined into Anthracocystis as A. flocculosa. Additionally, new combinations are proposed for four teliosporic species (Anthracocystis andrewmitchellii, A. christineae, A. kenyana, A. warambiensis).
Highlights
The smut genus Anthracocystis Bref. has been described for a causative agent of head smut of millet (Panicum miliaceum L.), Anthracocystis destruens (Schltdl.) Bref. (Brefeld 1912; McTaggart et al 2012b), but has not been accepted by most smut researchers
Blast searches (Altschul et al 1997) for both the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and large subunit (LSU) sequences of the smut specimens on Euclasta condylotricha revealed closest similarity to species of Anthracocystis or Pseudozyma Bandoni emend
The phylogenetic position of the smut specimens on Euclasta condylotricha was determined from their concatenated ITS+LSU sequences within a dataset that covered all ITS and LSU sequences of Anthracocystis available in GenBank, as well as all sequences of yeast isolates and uncultured fungus clones that clustered within Anthracocystis
Summary
The smut genus Anthracocystis Bref. has been described for a causative agent of head smut of millet (Panicum miliaceum L.), Anthracocystis destruens (Schltdl.) Bref. (Brefeld 1912; McTaggart et al 2012b), but has not been accepted by most smut researchers. (Brefeld 1912; McTaggart et al 2012b), but has not been accepted by most smut researchers Until very recently, it was forgotten or considered synonymous with Sporisorium Ehrenb. (2003, 2005) revealed that Sporisorium species are split into two main lineages This finding was later confirmed by other molecular analyses (Cunnington et al 2005; Vánky et al 2006; Vánky and Lutz 2011; McTaggart et al 2012a; Shivas et al 2013; Zhang et al 2013). These two main lineages included the type species of Sporisorium The most important diagnostic characters of the resurrected and emended genus Anthracocystis are: a peridium composed of mostly fungal cells, filiform or slender columellae, persistent spore balls usually composed of dimorphic spores (i.e., morphologically different inner and outer spores), and a lack of sterile cells between spore balls
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