Nephridiophaga maderae Radek, Owerfeldt, Gisder & Wurzbacher

Radek, Renate, Wurzbacher, Christian, Gisder, Sebastian, Nilsson, R. Henrik, Owerfeldt, Anja, Genersch, Elke, Kirk, Paul M. & Voigt, Kerstin, 2017, Morphologic and molecular data help adopting the insect-pathogenic nephridiophagids (Nephridiophagidae) among the early diverging fungal lineages, close to the Chytridiomycota, MycoKeys 25, pp. 31-50 : 40

Nephridiophaga maderae Radek, Owerfeldt, Gisder & Wurzbacher sp. nov.

Diagnosis.

Flattened, oval to elongate, uninucleate spores measuring 6.3-7.9 (7.2) x 3.1-4.7 (3.7) µm in fresh preparations and 4.8-7.5 (6.4) x 2.4-4.5 (3.3) µm in Giemsa-stained smears. 6-26 (15) spores per sporogenic plasmodium. Vegetative and sporogenic life cycles stages in lumen of Malpighian tubules. Vegetative plasmodia are rarely intracellular in epithelial cells of Malpighian tubules.

Holotype.

Two slides were deposited in the Upper Austrian Museum in Linz, Austria (Giemsa stained smear with slide number 2014/58 and hemalaun-eosin stained paraffin sections with slide number 2014/59).

Distribution / host locality.

Culture at the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), Berlin, Germany. Naturally occurring in tropical regions world-wide.

Ecology: Infection of the host by oral ingestion of spores. Life cycle stages develop in the Malpighian tubules. Spores released via the feces.

Etymology and host.

Named after its host, the Madeira cockroach, Leucophaea maderae .