Two novel species of Calonectria isolated from soil in a natural forest in China

Abstract

Species of Calonectria include important pathogens of numerous agronomic and forestry crops worldwide, and they are commonly distributed in soils of tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Previous research results indicated that species diversity of Calonectria in China is relatively high. Most Calonectria spp. reported and described from China were obtained from diseased Eucalyptus tissues or soils in Eucalyptus plantations established in tropical and subtropical areas in southern China. Recently, a number of Calonectria isolates were isolated from soils in a natural forest in the temperate region of central China. These isolates were identified by DNA sequence comparisons for the translation elongation factor 1-alpha (tef1), histone H3 (his3), calmodulin (cmdA) and β-tubulin (tub2) gene regions, combined with morphological characteristics. Two novel species of Calonectria were identified and described, and are named here as Calonectria lichi and Ca. montana, which reside in the Prolate Group and Sphaero-Naviculate Group, respectively. This study revealed that more species of Calonectria may occur in natural forests in central China than previously suspected.

First report of Calonectria montana causing damping‐off disease on pine and spruce seedlings in Europe

“…They were grouped with C. montana and C. canadiana into a strongly supported clade flanked by C. penicilloides . This arrangement corresponds to the tree of Liu, and Chen (2017): three C. montana isolates flanked by C. canadiana . The difference in our tree is that Polish isolates when included in the analysis take an unresolved position next to C. canadiana making the arrangement of the entire clade much less clear.…”

“…Liu & S.F. Chen (Liu & Chen, 2017). The seven‐day‐old colonies on MEA were buff and wooly on the averse, sienna to chestnut on the reverse, fast‐growing.…”

“…Thus, our results confirm that C. montana is very closely related to C. canadiana . However, C. montana can be easily distinguished morphologically from C. canadiana by having shorter and wider macroconidia and lack of lateral stipe extensions (Liu & Chen, 2017). Our isolates well fit the morphological description of C. montana (Liu & Chen, 2017).…”

“…Calonectria montana was originally described from natural forest soil in central China (Liu & Chen, 2017). This paper is the first report of C. montana outside Asia suggesting its wider geographical distribution than previously known.…”

“…Bayesian phylogenetic analysis was conducted to refine further species identification of our isolates using MrBayes 3.1.2 (Ronquist, & Hulsenbeck, 2003). The analysis included all sequences generated in this study along with sequences of closely related Calonectria species downloaded from GenBank (Liu & Chen, 2017; Lombard, Crous, Wingfield, & Wingfield, 2010a, 2010b). All three gene regions were aligned separately and analysed as independent data partitions.…”