Sporobolomyces diospyroris sp. nov., Sporobolomyces lophatheri sp. nov. and Sporobolomyces pyrrosiae sp. nov., three new species of ballistoconidium-forming yeasts in the Agaricostilbum lineage isolated from plants in Taiwan

Abstract

IntroductionIn the course of a survey of ballistoconidium-forming yeasts living in the phyllosphere of Taiwan, 154 strains were isolated from 21 samples of plants collected in a protected subtropical rain forest. One hundred and forty-six of them produced ballistoconidia and were assigned to the genera Bullera (91 strains), Kockovaella (1 strain), Sporobolomyces (53 strains) and the yeastlike fungus Tilletiopsis (1 strain). Among strains assigned to the genus Sporobolomyces, two strains forming large ballistoconidia were found to represent a new species in the Erythrobasidium cluster and described as Sporobolomyces magnisporus (Nakase et al., 2003). Another three strains are closely related to species in the Agaricostilbum/Bensingtonia cluster (Hamamoto and Nakase, 2000) or Agaricostilbum lineage (Scorzetti et al., 2002) Three strains of xylose-lacking and ubiquinone-10-having ballistoconidium-forming yeasts isolated from plant leaves collected in Taiwan were found to represent respective new species. In phylogenetic trees constructed based on the nucleotide sequences of 18S rDNA and D1/D2 domain of 26S rDNA, they were located in the Agaricostilbum lineage (Agaricostilbum /Bensingtonia cluster). Since the taxonomic properties of these species coincide with those of the genus Sporobolomyces, they are described as Sporobolomyces diospyroris sp. nov., Sporobolomyces lophatheri sp. nov. and Sporobolomyces pyrrosiae sp. nov., respectively.