Comparison of Cultural and Morphological Characters and ITS Sequences in Anamorphs of Botryosphaeria and Related Taxa

Abstract

Anamorphs of 22 strains of botryosphaer- iaceous fungi including Fusicoccum spp., Diplodia spp., Sphaeropsis spp., and Lasiodiplodia theobromae (teleomorph = Botryosphaeria rhodina) were com- pared utilizing conidial characters, cultural morphol- ogy, growth rates and nucleotide sequences of the nuclear rDNA internal transcribed spacers ITS 1 and ITS 2. The ITS data shared consensus with morpho- logical and cultural characters in separating 7 of the 22 strains. The 7 strains were placed into one of three groups that corresponded with the morphological species L. theobromae, S. sapinea, and F. luteum. Only partial consensus was achieved with the remaining 15 strains as ITS sometimes grouped together strains with uniform morphological and cultural characters and other times not. The ten Fusicoccum strains, iden- tified as anamorphs of B. dothidea or B. ribis, were divided into two ITS groups and up to five groups based on traditional characters. The two putative B. ribis strains were consistently grouped together and appear to represent a stable variant of B. dothidea.