Discovery or Extinction of New Scleroderma Species in Amazonia?

Nitaro Maekawa,Isadora F. França,João V. C. Soares,María P. Martín,Jae-Hyuk Yu,Bianca D. B. Silva,Iuri G. Baseia,Shuji Ushijima,Noemia K. Ishikawa

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0167879

Abstract

The Amazon Forest is a hotspot of biodiversity harboring an unknown number of undescribed taxa. Inventory studies are urgent, mainly in the areas most endangered by human activities such as extensive dam construction, where species could be in risk of extinction before being described and named. In 2015, intensive studies performed in a few locations in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest revealed three new species of the genus Scleroderma: S. anomalosporum, S. camassuense and S. duckei. The two first species were located in one of the many areas flooded by construction of hydroelectric dams throughout the Amazon; and the third in the Reserva Florestal Adolpho Ducke, a protected reverse by the INPA. The species were identified through morphology and molecular analyses of barcoding sequences (Internal Transcribed Spacer nrDNA). Scleroderma anomalosporum is characterized mainly by the smooth spores under LM in mature basidiomata (under SEM with small, unevenly distributed granules, a characteristic not observed in other species of the genus), the large size of the basidiomata, up to 120 mm diameter, and the stelliform dehiscence; S. camassuense mainly by the irregular to stellate dehiscence, the subreticulated spores and the bright sulfur-yellow colour, and Scleroderma duckei mainly by the verrucose exoperidium, stelliform dehiscence, and verrucose spores. Description, illustration and affinities with other species of the genus are provided.

Highlights

Amazonia is the largest and most diverse of the world’s tropical rainforests, encompassing more than 6 million km2 in nine countries of South America
The topologies of the three analyses performed (Maximum parsimony, Maximum likelihood and Bayesian) were similar to each other; the 50% majority-rule consensus tree from the Bayesian analysis is shown in Fig 1 with MP-BS, ML-BS and posterior probabilities (PP) on branches
The centers of endemism in Amazonia are well established for animals and plants [63], and the type locality of the two new Scleroderma species, S. anomalosporum and S. camassuense, are within these areas of high endemism

Summary

Introduction

Amazonia is the largest and most diverse of the world’s tropical rainforests, encompassing more than 6 million km in nine countries of South America. Recent studies indicate at least 427 amphibians, 1294 birds, 3,000 fishes, 378 reptiles, 427 mammals, and 40,000 plant species in Amazonian rainforest [2]. Molecular studies combined with morphological knowledge has led to a better delimitation of taxonomic groups, determining which morphological characters are informative, or not, so as to detect cryptic species. There seems to be consensus that these rainforests are reservoirs of the greatest amount of biodiversity as yet uncatalogued by science [6,7,8], which makes the destruction of the tropical rainforests the main challenge facing the discovery of fungi that are still unknown

Methods

Results

Conclusion