Lignicolous freshwater ascomycota from Thailand: Phylogenetic and morphological characterisation of two new freshwater fungi: Tingoldiago hydei sp. nov. and T. clavata sp. nov. from Eastern Thailand.

Li Xu,Dan-Feng Bao,Xi-Jun Su,Zong-Long Luo,Hong-Wei Shen,Hong-Yan Su

doi:10.3897/mycokeys.65.49769

Abstract

Lignicolous freshwater fungi represent one of the largest groups of Ascomycota. This taxonomically highly diverse group plays an important role in nutrient and carbon cycling, biological diversity and ecosystem functioning. The diversity of lignicolous freshwater fungi along a north-south latitudinal gradient is currently being studied in Asia. In this paper, we introduce two novel freshwater taxa viz. Tingoldiago hydeisp. nov. and T. clavatasp. nov. which were collected from freshwater substrates in Eastern Thailand. Morphological comparison based on the size of ascomata, asci and ascospores, as well as multi-gene phylogenetic analyses based on LSU, SSU, ITS and TEF1-α DNA sequences, supports their placement in Tingoldiago (Lentitheciaceae). Descriptions and illustrations of these two new species are provided.

Highlights

Freshwater fungi are those which the whole or part of their life cycle is found in a freshwater habitat (Thomas 1996, Wong et al 1998) and they are an evolutionary important group (Vijaykrishna et al 2006)
The topologies of RAxML, MP and Bayesian are similar and the bootstrap support values for Maximum Likelihood (ML), Maximum Parsimony (MP) higher than 75% and Bayesian posterior probabilities (PP) greater than 0.95 are given above the nodes
We can distinguish them by the size of ascomata and asci and the colour, septate and appendages of ascospores

Summary

Introduction

Freshwater fungi are those which the whole or part of their life cycle is found in a freshwater habitat (Thomas 1996, Wong et al 1998) and they are an evolutionary important group (Vijaykrishna et al 2006). A lot of studies on freshwater fungi have focused on lignicolous freshwater fungi (Tsui et al 2000, Cai et al 2002, Luo et al 2004, 2018, Jones et al 2014, Hyde et al 2016, Yang et al 2017), which were defined as those fungi that grow on submerged woody debris in freshwater streams, ponds, lakes and tree hollows (Hyde et al 2016) They grow on submerged wood in peat swamps and dams (Pinnoi et al 2006, Pinruan et al 2007, 2014, Hu et al 2010). The dominant groups of lignicolous freshwater fungi are Dothideomycetes and Sordarialmycets (Jones et al 2014, Hyde et al 2016, Wijayawardene et al 2017, 2018)

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Conclusion