Fissuroma (Aigialaceae: Pleosporales) appears to be hyperdiverse on Arecaceae: evidence from two new species from southern Thailand

Sirinapa Konta,Mingkwan Doilom,Danushka Sandaruwan Tennakoon,Prapassorn Damrongkool Eungwanichayapant,Kevin David Hyde,Saranyaphat Boonmee,Chanokned Senwanna

doi:10.1590/0102-33062020abb0021

Abstract

ABSTRACT Thailand and other tropical regions have high fungal diversity. Our investigation and examination of microfungi on palms (Arecaceae) revealed two new ascomycetous species of Fissuroma. Fissuroma arengae and F. wallichiae spp. nov. are introduced using morphological and phylogenetic evidence. The novel species have coriaceous ascomata, cylindrical-clavate asci and ascospores with a distinct and thin mucilaginous sheath. Fissuroma arengae is similar to F. wallichiae but can be distinguished by minor morphology, host substrate and gene base-pair differences. Phylogenetic analyses of combined LSU, ITS, SSU, tef1-α and rpb2 sequence data showed that these strains grouped within Fissuroma, further confirming this genus as monophyletic. The two new species are described and illustrated to support their taxonomic placement. Fissuroma appears to be a highly diverse genus often occurring on palms. It is likely that more research will result in numerous new taxa being discovered.

Highlights

To help understand the diversity of microfungi, we have been investigating the fungi on palms, Pandanaceae and grasses (Taylor & Hyde 2003; Hyde et al 2007; Whitton et al 2012; Thambugala et al 2017; Goonasekara et al 2018; Tibpromma et al 2018)
Maximum parsimony analysis of the remaining 1,009 parsimony-informative characters resulted in 1,000 trees with TL = 2261, CI = 0.677, RI = 0.843, RC = 0.571, HI = 0.323
Bayesian posterior probabilities from Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling (MCMC) were evaluated with a final average standard deviation of the split frequency of 0.009698

Summary

Introduction

To help understand the diversity of microfungi, we have been investigating the fungi on palms, Pandanaceae and grasses (Taylor & Hyde 2003; Hyde et al 2007; Whitton et al 2012; Thambugala et al 2017; Goonasekara et al 2018; Tibpromma et al 2018). Our studies have constantly revealed new taxa, and would suggest that the estimated 2.2–3.8 million fungal species (Hawksworth & Lücking 2017) is certainly not an excessive number. In Thailand, the diversity has been shown to be extremely high with up to 96 % of species collected being new (Hyde et al 2018). The high diversity of novel fungi on palms have been revealed in several studies (Hyde 1997; Fröhlich & Hyde 1999; 2000; Yanna et al 2001; Pinnoi et al 2006; Pinruan et al 2007; Konta et al 2017; Zhang et al 2019).

Methods

Results

Conclusion