Discovery of Novel Backusella (Backusellaceae, Mucorales) Isolated from Invertebrates and Toads in Cheongyang, Korea

Abstract

Three novel fungal species, Backusella chlamydospora sp. nov., B. koreana sp. nov., and B. thermophila sp. nov., as well as two new records, B. oblongielliptica and B. oblongispora, were found in Cheongyang, Korea, during an investigation of fungal species from invertebrates and toads. All species are described here using morphological characters and sequence data from internal transcribed spacer sequences of ribosomal DNA and large subunit of the ribosomal DNA. Backusella chlamydospora is different from other Backusella species by producing chlamydospores. Backusella koreana can be distinguished from other Backusella species by producing abundant yeast-like cells. Backusella thermophila is characterized by a variable (subglobose to oblong, applanate to oval, conical and ellipsoidal to pyriform) columellae and grows well at 37 °C. Multigene phylogenetic analyses of the combined ITS and LSU rDNA sequences data generated from maximum likelihood and MrBayes analyses indicate that B. chlamydospora, B. koreana, and B. thermophila form distinct lineages in the family Backusellaceae. Detailed descriptions, illustrations, phylogenetic tree, and taxonomic key to the Backusella species present in Korea are provided.

Discovery of Three New Mucor Species Associated with Cricket Insects in Korea

“…Three new species described here were recovered from samples collected at Kunryang-ri, Cheongyang, located in Chungnam Province, Korea, an area recognized as a biodiversity hotspot and known as the “Alps of Chungnam” with significant mucoralean species richness [ 13 , 28 ]. With further investigations, we expect to discover additional unreported species in this genus.…”

“…The insects were collected in polyethylene bags, stored at ambient temperature, and transported to the laboratory. Fungal isolation from the insect samples was conducted following our previous methods [ 28 ]. Briefly, the samples were transferred to clean Petri dishes.…”

“…Then, hyphal tips were transferred to fresh PDA. All isolates were purified by single spore isolation as previously described [ 28 ].…”

Two New Species and Three New Records of Ascomycetes in Korea

“…[ 36 ], Carbone and Kohn [ 37 ], and Nguyen et al. [ 38 ]. The quality of PCR products was assessed using 1% agarose gel electrophoresis.…”

Outline and divergence time of subkingdom Mucoromyceta: two new phyla, five new orders, six new families and seventy-three new species

“…Voigt et al (2021) supposed that species in Mucoromyceta could be significantly higher than what was known to exist. Inspiringly, new species have been described in the subkingdom (Hurdeal et al 2021, Nguyen et al 2021, Zhao et al 2021b, Zong et al 2021) at an accelerated pace after the inflection point around the year of 2000 on the trend curve of species number (Fig. 1), which is due to advances in molecular phylogeny (Dai et al 2015.…”