Six new species of Sporothrix from hardwood trees in Poland.

Agnieszka Ostafińska,Robert Jankowiak,Piotr Bilański,Halvor Solheim,Michael J Wingfield

doi:10.3897/mycokeys.82.66603

Abstract

Sporothrix (Sordariales, Ascomycota) is a well-supported monophyletic lineage within the Ophiostomatales, species of which occur in a diverse range of habitats including on forest trees, in the soil, associated with bark beetles and mites as well as on the fruiting bodies of some Basidiomycota. Several species have also been reported as important human and animal pathogens. During surveys of insect- and wound-associated Ophiostomatales from hardwood trees in Poland, many isolates with affinity to Sporothrix were recovered. In the present study, six undescribed Sporothrix spp. collected during these surveys are characterized based on their morphological characteristics and multi-locus phylogenenetic inference. They are described as Sporothrixcavum, Sporothrixcracoviensis, S.cryptarchum, S.fraxini, S.resoviensis, and S.undulata. Two of the Sporothrix spp. reside in the S.gossypina-complex, while one forms part of the S.stenoceras-complex. One Sporothrix sp. is a member of lineage F, and two other species grouped outside any of the currently defined species complexes. All the newly described species were recovered from hardwood habitats in association with sub-cortical insects, wounds or woodpecker cavities. These species were morphologically similar, with predominantly asexual states having hyaline or lightly pigmented conidia, which produce holoblastically on denticulate conidiogenous cells. Five of the new taxa produce ascomata with necks terminating in long ostiolar hyphae and allantoid ascospores without sheaths. The results suggest that Sporothrix species are common members of the Ophiostomatales in hardwood ecosystems of Poland.

Highlights

Sporothrix was established by Hektoen and Perkins (1900) based on the morphological description of the human pathogen, Sporothrix schenckii
Species of Sporothrix (Ascomycota, Ophiostomatales, Ophiostomataceae) were first accommodated in Sporotrichum (De Beurmann and Gougerot 1911). Until the latter half of the 20th century, these fungi were treated in various other genera, including Cephalosporium, Cladosporium (Hedgcock 1906; Münch 1907; Lagerberg et al 1927; Melin and Nannfeldt 1934; Siemaszko 1939; Davidson 1942; Bakshi 1950; Mathiesen-Käärik 1953; Hunt 1956), Cylindrocephalum, Hormodendron (Robak 1932), Hyalodendron (Goidànich 1935; Georgescu et al 1948), and Rhinotrichum (Georgescu et al 1948; Sczerbin-Parfenenko 1953), in order to accommodate the asexual morphs of Ophiostoma. de Hoog (1974) published a monograph of the Sporothrix species and proposed the placement of S. schenckii as the asexual morph of O. stenoceras
Phylogenetic analysis of the ITS indicated that the unknown species resided in two previously defined Sporothrix species complexes, including the S. gossypina- and S. stenoceras- species complexes, and lineage “F”

Summary

Introduction

Sporothrix was established by Hektoen and Perkins (1900) based on the morphological description of the human pathogen, Sporothrix schenckii. As DNA sequencing technology was applied to resolve taxonomic relationships for fungi, evidence emerged that S. schenckii is phylogenetically related to species of Ophiostoma (Berbee and Taylor 1992; Hausner et al 1993, 2000) In these studies, species producing only sporothrix-like asexual states were treated as members of the S. schenckii– O. stenoceras complex in Ophiostoma sensu lato (De Beer et al 2003; Villarreal et al 2005; Roets et al 2006; Zipfel et al 2006; De Meyer et al 2008; Linnakoski et al 2010; Kamgan Nkuekam et al 2012). Sporothrix is defined as one of nine relatively clearly defined genera in the Ophiostomataceae (De Beer and Wingfield 2013; De Beer et al 2013a, 2013b, 2016)

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