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Diatrypasimilis australiensis, a novel xylarialean fungus from mangrove

     ¹ American Type Culture Collection, Manassas, VA
² American Type Culture Collection
³ Institute of Marine Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Morehead City, North Carolina
⁴ Institute of Marine Sciences, Univ North Carolina, Morehead City, NC, 28557
⁵ Mycology and Botany, American Type Culture Collection (ATCC), 10801 University Blvd, Manassas, Virginia, 20110, United States of America

A marine xylarialean fungus, isolated from roots of Rhizophora (mangrove) in Australia, displays a morphology of eight ellipsoidal dark brown ascospores in a cylindrical ascus having a refractive apical apparatus. Each ascospore has a longitudinal germ slit. The fungus grew very slowly and produced dark brown water-soluble pigment(s) on various media. It developed unique, column-shaped, indeterminate synnemata on which needle-shaped conidia were produced. The sexual stage of this fungus was not observed under the laboratory conditions tested. Molecular phylogenetic analyses of the combined sequences of nuclear ribosomal RNA genes and their internal transcribed spacers placed it at a basal position in the clade of Diatrypaceae of the Xylariales with comparatively high statistical support. However, the morphological features and phylogenetic position of this organism do not closely resemble any known fungal taxa. Therefore this fungus is proposed to be a representative of a novel taxon and described as Diatrypasimilis australiensis gen. et sp. nov.

Key words: acicular conidia, eight-spored ascus, germ-slit ascospore, indeterminate synnema, spiral hyphae