Chaetomium grande Asgari & Zare, Mycologia

Abdel-Azeem, Ahmed M., Blanchette, Robert A. & Held, Benjamin W., 2018, New record of Chaetomium grande Asgari & Zare (Chaetomiaceae) for the Egyptian and African mycobiota, Phytotaxa 343 (3), pp. 283-288 : 284-287

Chaetomium grande Asgari & Zare, Mycologia 103(4): 874 (2011)

MF787599 ( FIG. 1 A–E)

Specimens Examined: — Egypt, isolated from Verbascum sinaiticum, Saint Katherine Protectorate , South Sinai, Egypt, 11 May 2013, 27 August 2013, 30 November 2014, 28 December 2015, leg. Ahmed M. Abdel-Azeem, det. Ahmed.M. Abdel-Azeem (SCUF-155, 189, 209, 255).

Colonies 33–(47)– 52 mm diam on OMA in 7 d at 28 C, dirty white; reverse olivaceous white. Ascomata maturing within 14d, olivaceous gray or yellowish green in reflected light, globose, subglobose to ovoid, 200–400 μm diam, with narrowly rounded base and broad ostiole. Peridium brown or dark brown, of textura intricata. Ascomatal hairs dark brown, partly long (up to 900 μm), sinous to undulate, with narrowly pointed tip, irregularly branched, verrucose (ornaments cupulate at maturity), 2.5–5 μm wide at the base, 2–3 μm in the middle part. Asci clavate, eight-spored, short stalked, 55–95 (–100) × 25–40 μm. Ascospores dark brown, thick-walled, broadly ellipsoidal or spherical, 16–20 × 14.5–18 × 12–14 μm, with two rounded, sometimes slightly protuberant, polar germ pores; immature ascospores containing several small guttules, mature ascospores with a single large guttule ( FIG. 1). Anamorph not recorded. Isolate MF787599 was subjected to molecular identification based on sequence analysis of the ITS regions. A search of the GenBank database via BLAST revealed that the ITS region sequence of MF787599 exhibited high similarity (100%) with Ch. grande . This relationship was also evident from the phylogenetic tree constructed using ITS region sequences. The isolate MF787599 clustered together with Ch. megalocarpum isolates, thus confirming their closest relationship at the species level ( FIG. 2 ).

Conservation status:— Conservation of fungi in Egypt and worldwide remains very low, and more education on fungal conservation is urgently needed. Although the species distribution is restricted only in South Sinai, Egypt, and in this state, data deficient (DD) is the conservation status of this fungal species according to the IUCN criteria (2010).

Figures

FIGURE 2: ITS sequence tree of Ch. grande (MF787599) made though NCBI blast based on neighbour joining method with max sequence difference of 0.75.