Phaeoacremonium species diversity on woody hosts in the Western Cape Province of South Africa

Abstract

Nineteen Phaeoacremonium species are currently known in South Africa. These have been reported from grapevines, fruit trees, fynbos twig litter and arthropods. In other countries some of these Phaeoacremonium species are also known from hosts such as European olive, quince and willow that commonly occur in the Western Cape Province of South Africa, where most South African records of Phaeoacremonium have been made. The aim of this study was to investigate the species diversity and host-range of Phaeoacremonium in the Western Cape Province of South Africa by characterising 156 isolates collected from 29 woody hosts. Phylogenetic analyses of combined actin and beta-tubulin datasets allowed for the identification of 31 species among the 156 isolates, including 13 new species and 3 known species that had not been recorded in South Africa previously. The new Phaeoacremonium species include P. album, P. aureum, P. bibendum, P. gamsii, P. geminum, P. junior, P. longicollarum, P. meliae, P. oleae, P. paululum, P. proliferatum, P. rosicola and P. spadicum. All previous records of P. alvesii in South Africa were re-identified as P. italicum, but both species were recovered during this survey. A total of 35 described Phaeoacremonium species are now known from South Africa, more than double the number reported from any other country. This high diversity reflects the high diversity of indigenous flora of the Cape Floral Region, a biodiversity hotspot mainly situated in the Western Cape Province. Paraphyly and incongruence between individual phylogenies of the actin and beta-tubulin regions complicated species delimitation in some cases indicating that additional phylogenetic markers should be investigated for use in Phaeoacremonium phylogenies to prevent misidentifications and the introduction of vague species boundaries.

Genera of phytopathogenic fungi: GOPHY 2

“…Jattaea algeriensis , Calosphearia africana and Pleurostoma richardsiae were used as outgroups. GenBank accession numbers are listed in Spies et al. (2018) .…”

Beta-tubulin and Actin gene phylogeny supports Phaeoacremonium ovale as a new species from freshwater habitats in China

“… Phaeoacremonium is currently accommodated in the monogeneric family Togniniaceae ( Wijayawardene et al 2018 ). To date, 65 species are accepted in this genus ( Mostert et al 2006b ; Gramaje et al 2015 ; Marin-Felix et al 2018 ; Spies et al 2018 ). While most of the species are commonly isolated as asexual morphs, some taxa have been recovered in their sexual morph state, viz.…”

“…The quality of the amplified nucleotide sequences was checked and combined by SeqMan version 7.1.0 (44.1) and Finch TV version 1.4.0 ( www.geospiza.com ). Sequences used by Marin-Felix et al (2018) , Spies et al (2018) and the closest matches for our strains were retrieved from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) by nucleotide BLAST. Sequences were aligned in MAFFT v. 7.310 ( http://mafft.cbrc.jp/alignment/server/index.html ) ( Katoh and Standley 2016 ) and manually corrected in Bioedit 7.0.9.0 ( Hall 1999 ).…”

“… Gramaje et al (2015) proposed Phaeoacremonium over Togninia as the correct name based on common usage and this has been listed in Réblová et al (2016) and followed in Wijayawardene et al (2018) . The species are basically characterised by black ascomata with a long neck and clavate to cylindrical asci with oval to ellipsoid, hyaline ascospores and straight or flexuous mononematous conidiophores with oval to reniform phialo-conidia ( Marin-Felix et al 2018 ; Spies et al 2018 ).…”

Fungi infecting woody plants: emerging frontiers

“…Several species of woody plants growing in the proximity of vineyards or fruit tree orchards have been shown to harbour species of Phaeoacremonium . In a survey of more than 29 different woody plants growing in close proximity to vineyards in South Africa, 31 species were identified, including 13 novel species ( Spies et al 2018 ).…”