Abstract
During our studies on fungal diversity from plant substrates, a new species of Valsaria was isolated from dead branches of Ostrya carpinifolia. The taxon is morphologically similar to other taxa in Valsariaceae and is characterized by pseudostromata, apically free pseudoparaphyses, bitunicate asci, and dark brown, 2-celled ascospores. However, it differs from extant species in number of guttules and ornamentation of spore. It is introduced herein as Valsaria ostryae sp. nov. within the family Valsariaceae. Multigene phylogenies based on combined LSU, ITS and RPB2 DNA sequence data generated from maximum likelihood, maximum parsimony and MrBayes analyses indicate that V. ostryae is basal to V. lopadostomoides and V. rudis and its establishment as a new species is strongly supported. No discordance was found between our morphological and phylogenetic species boundaries as postulated by other researchers and our molecular data strongly supports ornamentation of spore as useful for species delineation. Valsaria species do not appear to be host specific. Full morphological details are provided herein and phylogenetic relationships of Valsaria species are also discussed in light with host association.
Highlights
Valsariaceae was introduced by Jaklitsch et al [1] and classified in the order Valsariales
Multigene phylogenies based on combined large subunit rDNA (LSU), internal transcribed spacers (ITS) and RPB2 DNA sequence data generated from maximum likelihood, maximum parsimony and MrBayes analyses indicate that V. ostryae is basal to V. lopadostomoides and V. rudis and its establishment as a new species is strongly supported
The phylogenetic trees obtained from maximum likelihood and parsimony analyses yielded trees with similar overall topology and in agreement with previous study based on maximum likelihood analysis [1]
Summary
Valsariaceae was introduced by Jaklitsch et al [1] and classified in the order Valsariales. Species of this family have a worldwide distribution occurring on sun-exposed, corticated logs, branches of coniferous and broadleaf trees and on bamboo [1] and exist as saprobes, plant pathogens or necrotrophs [2,3]. The family comprises three genera namely Bambusaria.
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