Phylogenetic and microscopicstudies in the genus Lactifluus(Basidiomycota, Russulales) in West Africa, including the description of four new species

Abstract

Despite the crucial ecological role of lactarioid taxa (Lactifluus, Lactarius) as common ectomycorrhiza formers in tropical African seasonal forests, their current diversity is not yet adequately assessed. During the last few years, numerous lactarioid specimens have been sampled in various ecosystems from Togo (West Africa). We generated 48 ITS sequences and aligned them against lactarioid taxa from other tropical African ecozones (Guineo-Congolean evergreen forests, Zambezian miombo). A Maximum Likelihood phylogenetic tree was inferred from a dataset of 109 sequences. The phylogenetic placement of the specimens, combined with morpho-anatomical data, supported the description of four new species from Togo within the monophyletic genus Lactifluus: within subgen. Lactifluus (L. flavellus), subgen. Russulopsis (L. longibasidius and L. pectinatus), and subgen. Edules (L. melleus). This demonstrates that the current species richness of the genus is considerably higher than hitherto estimated for African species and, in addition, a need to redefine the subgenera and sections within it.

Lactifluus persicinus sp. nov. from the gallery forests of West Cameroon

“…Furthermore, at least 17 (possibly up to 44) species still await description (De Crop et al 2017). Lactifluus has a mainly tropical distribution, with the highest known diversity in tropical Africa (Bâ et al 2012, De Crop et al 2012, Maba 2015, Maba et al 2015a, Van de Putte et al 2009, Verbeken & Walleyn 2010 and tropical Asia (Le 2007, Stubbe et al (Maba 2015;Maba et al 2014Maba et al , 2015aMaba et al , 2015b, with around 38 Lactifluus species currently known from the area. However, certain regions within this area remain poorly explored with potentially many new species yet to be discovered and described.…”

Lactifluus bicapillus (Russulales, Russulaceae), a new species from the Guineo-Congolian rainforest

“…The milkcap genus Lactifluus is mainly distributed in the tropics (De Crop et al 2017). It is a species-rich genus with about 160 species distributed worldwide, of which the majority is found in tropical Asia (Le et al 2007b; Stubbe et al 2010; Van de Putte et al 2010), tropical Africa (Van de Putte et al 2009; Verbeken and Walleyn 2010; De Crop et al 2012, 2016; Maba et al 2014, 2015a, b; Delgat et al 2017; De Lange et al 2018) and the Neotropics (Henkel et al 2000; Miller et al 2002; Smith et al 2011; Sá et al 2013; Sá and Wartchow 2013). The genus is relatively understudied and many species remain undescribed due to this mainly tropical distribution.…”

Revisiting the morphology and phylogeny ofLactifluuswith three new lineages from southern China

“…It contained 15 species, belonging to the four subgenera proposed by Verbeken et al (2011. Before and after Buyck et al (2008) additional taxa from Africa, America and Asia were documented with molecular data, either using a single locus or a multigene approach (Henkel et al 2000;Buyck et al 2007;Stubbe et al 2010;van de Putte et al 2010van de Putte et al , 2012Wang et al 2012;Morozova et al 2013;de Crop et al 2014a;Maba et al 2014Maba et al , 2015. These taxa represented all six currently described subgenera (Verbeken et al 2011Stubbe et al 2012).…”