Kirschsteiniothelia thailandica Y.R. Sun, Yong Wang

Sun, Ya-Ru, Jayawardena, Ruvishika S., Hyde, Kevin D. & Wang, Yong, 2021, Kirschsteiniothelia thailandica sp. nov. (Kirschsteiniotheliaceae) from Thailand, Phytotaxa 490 (2), pp. 172-182 : 176

Kirschsteiniothelia thailandica Y.R. Sun, Yong Wang bis & K.D. Hyde, sp. nov.

Index Fungorum number: IF557949; Facesoffungi number: FoF 09289

Etymology: Referring the fungus collected from Thailand

Holotype: MFLU 20–0263

Saprobic on dead wood. Sexual morph: Undetermined. Asexual morph ( Fig 2): Hyphomycetous. Colonies scattered, effuse, brown to dark-brown, hairy on natural substrate. Mycelium composed of branched, smooth, septate, hyaline hyphae. Conidiophores macronematous, mononematous, solitary, erect, cylindrical, straight or slightly flexuous, unbranched, septate, brown to dark brown 55–93 × 7–10 μm (= 75.5 × 9 μm, n = 15). Conidiogenous cells monoblastic, integrated, terminal, cylindrical, brown to dark brown 9.5–21 × 7–10 μm (= 16.5 × 8 μm, n = 15). Conidia acrogenous, straight, solitary, obclavate, smooth-walled, 6–8-distoseptate, shiny, olivaceous or brown, hyaline at apex, truncate at base, tapering towards apex, 74–110 μm long (= 91 μm, n = 20), 13–20 μm at the widest (= 17 μm, n = 20), with a conspicuous, gelatinous, hyaline sheath around tip.

Culture characteristics: Conidia germinated on PDA within 24 hours from single-spore isolation. Both ends produced germ tubes. Colony diameter reached 25 mm after one month at indoor temperature on PDA media, circular, surface rough, flat, dark-olivaceous from above, dark from below.

Material examined: THAILAND, Chiang Rai Province, Mae Fah Luang University, Garden of Medicinal Plants , on twigs of Ficus microcarpa , 11 November 2019, Y. R . Sun, B4 ( MFLU 20–0263 , holotype; ex-type living culture MFLUCC 20–0116 ) .

Notes: We delete Kirschsteiniothelia emarceis because it’s a long branch in phylogenetic trees. Phylogenetic analysis showed that K. thailandica clustered with K. rostrata , K. tectonae and K. thujina , and they formed a sister clade with K. submersa . Kirschsteiniothelia thujina is known only its sexual morph ( Hawksworth 1985). Kirschsteiniothelia thailandica resembles to K. rostrate and K. tectonae in having unbranched, cylindrical conidiophores, integrated, terminal conidiogenous cells and obclavate, rostrate conidia with mucilaginous sheaths. However, K. thailandica has shorter conidiophores than K. rostrata (55–93 μm vs 190–450 μm). Kirschsteiniothelia thailandica differs from K. tectonae in having shorter conidia (74–110 μm vs 135–150 μm) and shorter conidiophores (55–93 μm vs up to 200 μm). In addition, polymorphic nucleotides from the ITS sequence data showed the more than one fifth of bases were different, and we also compared with other gene sequences ( Table 2).