Neodeightonia C. Booth, 1970

Pereira, Diana S. & Phillips, Alan J. L., 2023, Botryosphaeriaceae on palms-a new species of Neodeightonia, N. chamaeropicola, and new records from diseased foliage of ornamental palms in Portugal, Phytotaxa 627 (1), pp. 1921-1935 : 1921-1935

Neodeightonia C. Booth , in Punithalingam, Mycological Papers 119: 17 (1970), MycoBank MB3450

Neodeightonia was introduced by Booth based on N. subglobosa on dead culms of Bambusa arundinacea from Sierra Leone ( Punithalingam 1969). von Arx & Müller (1975) transferred N. subglobosa to Botryosphaeria and consequently reduced Neodeightonia to synonymy under Botryosphaeria . However, based on morpho-molecular data, Phillips et al. (2008) reinstated Neodeightonia as a separate lineage in Botryosphaeriaceae distinct from Botryosphaeria . Neodeightonia species are characterized by hyaline, aseptate ascospores with bipolar germ pores, surrounded by a membrane that swells in water acquiring a wing-like appearance, and hyaline, aseptate conidia that may become pigmented, 1-septate and smooth to finely roughened or striate ( Liu et al. 2012, Phillips et al. 2013, 2019) ( Table 4 ). They are typically associated with monocotyledonous plants and are mostly restricted to palms ( Arecaceae ) and bamboos ( Poaceae ) ( Punithalingam 1969, Phillips et al. 2008, Liu et al. 2012, Adamčík et al. 2015, Dai et al. 2017), being primarily reported as saprobes, although a few have been reported as pathogens causing leaf spots and leaf, rachis and root rot ( Ligoxigakis et al. 2013, Bengyella et al. 2015, Nishad & Ahmed 2020, Shabong & Kayang 2022, Zhang & Song 2022). Given the synonymies proposed and the species introduced herein, nine species known from culture are included in Neodeightonia based on morphological and phylogenetic analyses, namely N. chamaeropicola sp. nov., N. licuriensis ( Adamčík et al. 2015) , N. microspora ( Dai et al. 2017) , N. palmicola ( Liu et al. 2010) , N. phoenicum ( Phillips et al. 2008) , N. rattanica , N. rattanicola ( Konta et al. 2016a) , N. septata ( Wu et al. 2022) and N. subglobosa ( Phillips et al. 2008) . Of these, seven have been reported from palms ( N. chamaeropicola , N. licuriensis , N. palmicola , N. phoenicum , N. rattanica , N. rattanicola and N. septata ), while the remaining two have been reported from bamboos ( N. microspora and N. subglobosa ). Recently Botryosphaeria mucosa was transferred to Neodeightonia by Zhang et al. (2021b) based on morphological analysis, but since no molecular data are available for this species its status cannot be confirmed.