Cantharellus violaceovinosus, a new species from tropical Quercus forests in eastern Mexico

Abstract

During explorations of tropical oak forests in central Veracruz (eastern Mexico), the authors discovered a Cantharellus species that produces basidiomes with strikingly violet pileus and a hymenium with yellow, raised gill-like folds. It is harvested locally and valued as a prized edible wild mushroom. Systematic multiyear sampling of basidiomes allowed the recording of the morphological variation exhibited by fresh fruit bodies in different growth stages, which supports the recognition of this Cantharellus species from others in the genus. Two molecular phylogenetic analyses based on a set of sequences of species of all major clades in Cantharellus, one including sequences of the transcription elongation factor 1-alpha (tef-1α) and a combined tef-1α and nLSU region (the large subunit of the ribosome), confirm the isolated position of the new species in a clade close to C. lewisii from USA, in the subgenus Cantharellus. Detailed macroscopic and microscopic descriptions, accompanied by illustrations and a taxonomic discussion are presented.

Two new species and a new record of yellow Cantharellus from tropical Quercus forests in eastern Mexico with the proposal of a new name for the replacement of Craterellus confluens

“…We amplified the large subunit of ribosome (nLSU) using combinations of the pair of primers LR0R/LR7 (Vilgalys and Hesler 1990) and the pair of primers designed LRCA1(5'-GTTGCACTGTCCGAGTTGTA-3')/LRCA2(5'-AGACTGATG-GCGAGGTATGA-3'). PCR was performed according to Herrera et al (2018). A capillary sequencer, Genetic Analyzer 3730XL (Ap plied Biosystems), was used to obtain the sequences of the amplified PCR products.…”

“…We constructed a concatenated dataset, using PhyDE v.0.9971 (Müller et al 2010), with 19 sequences obtained here (nLSU and tef-1α) (Table 1), together with sequences of related taxonomic groups, and additionally taking as reference works on chantarelles by An et al (2017), Buyck et al (2014Buyck et al ( , 2016a, Herrera et al (2018) and Olariaga et al (2017). The dataset was aligned with MAFFT online service (Katoh et al 2019), and the inconsistencies were corrected manually.…”

“…Further explorations in tropical America are achieving also the discovery of undescribed species of the genus (e.g. Wartchow et al 2012;Henkel et al 2014;Nascimento et al 2014;Buyck et al 2016b;Herrera et al 2018) as occurred also with Craterellus (Wilson et al 2012).…”

“…In Cantharellus violaceovinosus (Herrera et al 2018), for example, it was possible to document wide macromorphological and color information through a register of samples collected over more than five years, even in weekly explorations along three years sampling. Such a record allowed us to recognize its phenology between July-October in pure stands of Quercus oleoides, and found it less frequent in association with Q. glaucescens and Q. sapotifolia.…”

Two new species of Lactifluus (Fungi, Russulales) from tropical Quercus forest in eastern Mexico

“…Ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi, such as Lactifluus species, are undoubtedly a key to the growth and survival of Quercus seedlings and trees in such patches of native tropical forest under drought conditions and adverse edge effects, through greater water and nutrient absorption in degraded soils. Despite their importance, ECM fungi in such a Mexican ecosystem have received scarce taxonomic attention, excepting reports, from the area or surroundings, of a few Boletales, Lactarius s.l., Cantharellus (Guzmán and Sampieri 1984; García et al 1987; Singer et al 1991; Montoya and Bandala 1996, Herrera et al 2018a, b).…”