Parafuscosporella aquatica H. Yang & H. Zhang, 2020

Yang, Hao, Dong, Wei, Yu, Xian-Dong, Bhat, D. Jayarama, Boonmee, Saranyaphat & Zhang, Huang, 2020, Four freshwater dematiaceous hyphomycetes in Sordariomycetes with two new species of Parafuscosporella, Phytotaxa 441 (1), pp. 19-34 : 24-27

Parafuscosporella aquatica H. Yang & H. Zhang , sp. nov. ( FIGURE 3, 4)

Index Fungorum number: IF557318, Facesoffungi number: FoF06886

Etymology:—referring to the aquatic habitat.

Saprobic on decaying wood in freshwater habitats. Sexual morph: undetermined. Asexual morph: Colonies on natural substrata sporodochial, effuse, black, scattered, granular. Mycelium partly immersed, partly superficial, composed of septate, branched, smooth-walled, hyaline hyphae. Conidiophores micronematous, mononematous, compact, mostly moniliform, with globose to subglobose cells, hyaline, smooth-walled. Conidiogenous cells holoblastic, monoblastic, integrated, terminal, smooth-walled, hyaline, globose to subglobose, 7–14 × 8–11 μm. Conidia acrogenous, ellipsoidal to obovoid, with a septum near the base, dark brown to black at the apical cell, paler at the basal cell, smooth-walled, 20–29 × 13–19 μm (= 26 × 16 μm, n = 40).

Cultural characteristics: —Conidia germinating on PDA within 48 h. Germ tubes produced from the basal cell. Colonies on PDA slow-growing, reaching 4.4 cm diameter in 60 days at 20–25°C, brown, with dense, tight mycelia on the surface, sparse at the margin, reverse dark brown, with smooth margin. Conidiophores reduced to a single conidiogenous cell. Conidiogenous cells holoblastic, monoblastic, integrated, smooth-walled, hyaline to pale brown. Conidia obovoid to pyriform, mostly with a septum near the base, smooth, light brown to brown when young, brown to dark brown when aged, 16–24 × 9–16 μm (= 19 × 12 μm, n = 30).

Material examined: — THAILAND. Mukdahan Province: Nong Bo Na Kae, 16°84’96’’N, 104°33’12’’E, on dead submerged decaying wood of an unidentified plant in a small river, 13 December 2018, Hao Yang, t43 ( MFLU 19–0550, holotype), ex-type living culture KUMCC 19–0211.

Notes: —In the phylogenetic analysis, Parafuscosporella aquatica clustered within Parafuscosporella as a sister taxon to P. moniliformis ( FIGURE 1). There are 34 (including 4 gaps) and 128 base pairs (including 35 gaps) differences in LSU and ITS sequences between the two species, respectively. They are recognized as distinct species based on guidelines in Jeewon & Hyde (2016). Morphologically, P. aquatica differs from P. moniliformis by shorter conidiophores (7–14 × 8–11 μm vs. 5.5–36 × 5–21 μm) and smaller conidia (= 19 × 12 μm vs. = 32 × 17 μm) ( Yang et al. 2016). In culture, P. aquatica has obovoid to pyriform, uniseptate conidia, while P. moniliformis produces globose to subglobose, aseptate conidia.