Diversity of Ascomycota in Jilin: Introducing Novel Woody Litter Taxa in Cucurbitariaceae

Abstract

Cucurbitariaceae has a high biodiversity worldwide on various hosts and is distributed in tropical and temperate regions. Woody litters collected in Changchun, Jilin Province, China, revealed a distinct collection of fungi in the family Cucurbitariaceae based on morphological and molecular data. Phylogenetic analyses of the concatenated matrix of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region, the large subunit (LSU) of ribosomal DNA, the RNA polymerase II subunit (rpb2), the translation elongation factor 1-alpha (tef1-α) and β-tubulin (β-tub) genes indicated that the isolates represent Allocucurbitaria and Parafenestella species based on maximum likelihood (ML), maximum parsimony (MP) and Bayesian analysis (BPP). We report four novel species: Allocucurbitaria mori, Parafenestella changchunensis, P. ulmi and P. ulmicola. The importance of five DNA markers for species-level identification in Cucurbitariaceae was determined by Assemble Species by Automatic Partitioning (ASAP) analyses. The protein-coding gene β-tub is determined to be the best marker for species level identification in Cucurbitariaceae.

A revision of the family Cucurbitariaceae with additional new taxa from forest trees in Iran

“…The family Cucurbitariaceae was reassessed using phylogenetic analyses based on DNA sequences from ve nuclear regions (ITS, LSU, tub2, tef1a and rpb2) to clarify generic and species concepts in this family. These genomic regions have been shown to be suitable to re ect phylogenetic relationships and delimit genera and species within Cucurbitariaceae (Wanasinghe et Su et al 2022). The major clades of phylogenetic trees (Fig.…”

“…The unavailable sequences of each genomic region for each strain in composite alignment were treated as missing data. Seven outgroup taxa from the families Didymellaceae, Leptosphaeriaceae, Neopyrenochaetaceae, Pseudopyrenochaetaceae, Pyrenochaetopsidaceae or incertae sedis in Pleosporales were used to root phylogenetic trees, according the results of previous studies (Jaklitsch et al 2018;Valenzuela-Lopez et al 2018; Jaklitsch and Voglmayr 2020; Su et al 2022). The maximum likelihood (ML) analysis was performed using raxmlGUI 2.0 beta (Edler et al 2019) with parameters adjusted for 1000 bootstrap replications (MLBS) and the general time-reversible (GTR) substitution model with a gamma-distributed rate variation and invariant site (G + I).…”

“…Gray. Cucurbitariaceae are commonly recognized by having immersed or super cial clustered ascomata with scattered ostioles and hyphal outgrowths, and having cylindrical to oblong bitunicate asci containing ellipsoid, fusoid or oblong muriformly septate ascospores (Jaklitsch et al 2018(Jaklitsch et al , 2020 Su et al 2022). Arx and Müller (1975) reduced the family Cucurbitariaceae to the genus Cucurbitaria, and placed it in the Pleosporaceae.…”

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“…LSU, SSU, ITS, rpb2 and tef1-α sequence data were used for BLAST search in NCBI-GenBank to obtain homologous sequences. Closely related sequences were downloaded from GenBank based on BLAST sequence similarity and reference publications (Woudenberg et al 2015, Su et al 2022, Wijayawardene et al 2022b). MAFFT v. 7.215 (Katoh and Standley 2013, http://mafft.cbrc.jp/ alignment/server/ index.html) was used for single gene sequence alignment.…”

“…Neocucurbitaria was introduced by Wanasinghe et (Su et al 2022, Wijayawardene et al 2022c. Jaklitsch et al (2020) recently re-visited the genus and provided a detailed generic description.…”