Peronospora aquilegiicola made its way to Germany: the start of a new pandemic?

Marco Thines,Tahir Ali,Thomas Brand,Anthony Buaya

doi:10.1007/s11557-020-01596-2

Abstract

AbstractPeronospora aquilegiicola is a destructive pathogen of columbines and has wiped out most Aquilegia cultivars in several private and public gardens throughout Britain. The pathogen, which is native to East Asia was noticed in England and Wales in 2013 and quickly spread through the country, probably by infested plants or seeds. To our knowledge, the pathogen has so far not been reported from other parts of Europe. Here, we report the emergence of the pathogen in the northwest of Germany, based on morphological and phylogenetic evidence. As the pathogen was found in a garden in which no new columbines had been planted recently, we assume that the pathogen has already spread from its original point of introduction in Germany. This calls for an increased attention to the further spread of the pathogen and the eradication of infection spots to avoid the spread to naturally occurring columbines in Germany and to prevent another downy mildew from becoming a global threat, like Peronospora belbahrii and Plasmopara destructor, the downy mildews of basil and balsamines, respectively.

Highlights

More than 700 oomycete species are known to cause downy mildew (Thines and Choi 2016)
Until the advent of molecular phylogenetics it was often assumed that species of downy mildews were mostly able to infect a whole family, but formae specialis, specialised forms, were frequently postulated (Yerkes and Shaw 1959)
Phylogenetic investigations have generally supported the narrow species concept advocated by Gäumann (1918, 1923) and others (Voglmayr 2003; Choi et al 2015a), and revealed that in the genera Bremia and Peronospora genetic distinctiveness in accordance with the host species was present (Thines et al 2011; Choi and Thines 2015)

Summary

Introduction

More than 700 oomycete species are known to cause downy mildew (Thines and Choi 2016). The genus Peronospora is the largest genus of the oomycetes and contains several hundred species that are Section Editor: Marc Stadler. Until the advent of molecular phylogenetics it was often assumed that species of downy mildews were mostly able to infect a whole family, but formae specialis, specialised forms, were frequently postulated (Yerkes and Shaw 1959). It was found that not host codivergence but frequent host jumps, subsequent radiation and speciation drive the observed species-richness of the downy mildews (Choi and Thines 2015; Thines 2019)

Methods

Results

Conclusion