Phylogenetic relationships in Hypomyces and allied genera, with emphasis on species growing on wood-decaying homobasidiomycetes

Abstract

To infer phylogenetic relationships among species of Hypomyces (Fr.) Tul and allied genera, partial sequences of the 28S rDNA were obtained for 21 strains representing 19 species. On the basis of these data and 38 sequences obtained from GenBank, phylogenetic analyses were performed using the programs PAUP and Pee-Wee. Hypomyces appears to be paraphyletic, with species having wet-conidial phialidic anamorphs more closely related to other genera. Hypomyces chrysostomus Berk & Broome is a sister group to the clade that includes species of Aphysiostroma Barrasa et al., Arachnocrea Moravec, and Hypocrea Fr. Based on morphological and molecular evidence, a new genus, Sporophagomyces, is described for Hypomyces chrysostomus and two allied species. Hypomyces broomeanus Tul. forms one clade with species of Sphaerostilbella Sacc. and is transferred to this genus. The recognition of Arachnocrea is justified. The integration of Cladobotryum Nees species that are not known to undergo sexual reproduction with Hypomyces species that possess Cladobotryum anamorphs receives strong support, but the whole complex of these species appears to be paraphyletic. However, constraint trees, which require monophyly of all these ana- and pleo-morphic species, do not appear significantly less likely than the other trees obtained under maximum likelihood or parsimony criteria. For the remaining species of Hypomyces, four distinct lineages are distinguished.