Delimiting species in Basidiomycota: a review

Abstract

Species delimitation is one of the most fundamental processes in biology. Biodiversity undertakings, for instance, require explicit species concepts and criteria for species delimitation in order to be relevant and translatable. However, a perfect species concept does not exist for Fungi. Here, we review the species concepts commonly used in Basidiomycota, the second largest phylum of Fungi that contains some of the best known species of mushrooms, rusts, smuts, and jelly fungi. In general, best practice is to delimitate species, publish new taxa, and conduct taxonomic revisions based on as many independent lines of evidence as possible, that is, by applying a so-called unifying (or integrative) conceptual framework. However, the types of data used vary considerably from group to group. For this reason we discuss the different classes of Basidiomycota, and for each provide: (i) a general introduction with difficulties faced in species recognition, (ii) species concepts and methods for species delimitation, and (iii) community recommendations and conclusions.

Ten decadal advances in fungal biology leading towards human well-being

“…Jeewon and Hyde ( 2016 ) provideded guidleines for describing a new species and the need for polyphyletic approaches was emphasised in the special issue, What is a species? (Boekhout et al 2021 ; Cao et al 2021a ; Chethana et al 2021b ; Jayawardena et al 2021b ; Lücking et al 2021 ; Maharachchikumbura et al 2021 ; Manawasinghe et al 2021 ; Pem et al 2021 ; Voigt et al 2021 ). The important repositories for taxa were developed earlier but in the last decades numerous new websites have been developed including sites on insect (Wei et al 2022 , https://invertebratefungi.org/references.php ), freshwater (Calabon et al 2020 , https://freshwaterfungi.org/ ) and marine fungi ( https://www.marinefungi.org/ ).…”

Providing Scale to a Known Taxonomic Unknown—At Least a 70-Fold Increase in Species Diversity in a Cosmopolitan Nominal Taxon of Lichen-Forming Fungi

“…Traditionally, and often due to lack of available genetic data, fungal species boundaries have been delimited based largely on morphological characteristics as they can be incredibly practical, especially in the field. However, robust phenotype-based species delimitations in fungi are often confounded by the existence of morphologically similar species in which intra- and inter-specific variations overlap regarding some characters that have been traditionally used to separate taxa [ 17 ].…”

Cryptic Species Diversity and Phylogenetic Relationship in the Rust Genus Chrysomyxa from China

“…For example, 14 different phylogenetic species were determined in the Melampsora epitea complex [8]. Similar patterns of cryptic speciation have also been in the rust species Endoraecium digitatum and Dasyspora gregaria [9][10][11].…”