Veronaea aquatica Chandrasiri, J.E. Huang & D.M. Hu, 2021

Chandrasiri, Sajini K. U., Liu, Yu-lin, Huang, Jun-En, Samarakoon, Milan C., Boonmee, Saranyaphat, Calabon, Mark S. & Hu, Dian-Ming, 2021, Veronaea aquatica sp. nov. (Herpotrichiellaceae, Chaetothyriales, Eurotiomycetes) from submerged bamboo in China, Biodiversity Data Journal 9, pp. 64505-64505 : 64505

Veronaea aquatica Chandrasiri, J.E. Huang & D.M. Hu sp. nov.

Materials

Type status: Holotype. Occurrence: recordedBy: J.E. Huang; Taxon: kingdom: Fungi; phylum: Ascomycota; class: Eurotiomycetes; order: Chaetothyriales; family: Herpotrichiellaceae; genus: Veronaea; specificEpithet: aquatica; taxonRank: species; Location: country: China; stateProvince: Jiangxi Province; locality: Lushan Mountains ; verbatimElevation: 675; verbatimLatitude: 29°55'72''N; verbatimLongitude: 115°94'86''E; Identification: identifiedBy: Sajini K. U. Chandrasiri; Event: year: 2017; month: December; day: 31; habitat: stream in small forest, on submerged decaying bamboo culms; fieldNotes: Freshwater; Record Level: institutionID: HFJAU 0739 ; institutionCode: Herbarium of Fungi, Jiangxi Agricultural University; collectionCode: HJ054 Type status: Other material. Record Level: type: ex-type living culture; collectionID: JAUCC2549 ; collectionCode: Jiangxi Agricultural University Culture Collection

Description

Saprobic on submerged decaying bamboo (Fig. 2 ). Sexual morph: Undetermined. Asexual morph: Hyphomycetous. Colonies effuse, spreading very widely, brown to dark brown, white hairy. Mycelium in the wood immersed or partly superficial, hyphae subhyaline to pale olivaceous, smooth, 1.5-3 μm wide. Conidiophores erect, the lower part is usually straight and the upper half is usually flexuose, usually loosely branched, macronematous, monomenatous, sometimes geniculate, smooth-walled, near the apex pale brown, dark brown at the middle and base, 2.5-4 μm wide and up to 280 μm long. Conidiogenous cells terminally integrated, polyblastic, occasionally intercalary, cylindrical, (3-)10-30 × 2-3.5 µm (x̄ = 16.5 × 2.5 μm, n = 30), variable in length, pale brown, later often becoming septate, fertile part subhyaline, wide at the basal part, rachis with crowded, flat to slightly prominent, faintly pigmented; scars flat, slightly pigmented, not thickened, about 0.65 μm diam. Conidia solitary, smooth, cylindrical to subpyriform and some subclavate, 6-11(-12) × 2.5-3.5(-4.0) µm (x̄ = 8.7 × 3.1 μm, n = 50), pale brown, most medially 1-spetate, rarely 0 or 2-septate, often constricted at the septum and the colour septum middle brown and the conidia with a round apex and truncate base; with a faintly darkened, unthickened hilum, about 0.5-0.9 μm diam.

Culture characteristics: Conidia germinating on PDA within 24 hrs. Colonies growing on PDA, circular, reaching 10-20 mm diam. after 2-3 weeks at 28°C, from above flat, dense, olivaceous to medium brown, lightly raised at centre, surface rough; from below medium to dark brown.

Etymology

Referring to the aquatic habitat.

Notes

Veronaea aquatica is morphologically most similar to V. japonica and V. botryosa . However, V. aquatica has 0-2-septate conidia, whereas those of V. japonica are 0-1-septate. In addition, the conidiophores of both V. compacta (up to 50 μm) and V. japonica (up to 65 μm) are shorter compared to V. aquatica (280 μm). Veronaea aquatica has conidiogenous cells that are 10-30 μm in length, while those of V. botryosa are 100 μm long. In addition, the conidiophores of V. aquatica are 280 μm long; they are shorter in V. botryosa (73-124 μm) (Fig. 2 ).

Veronaea aquatica shares the highest identity with V. japonica (CBS 776.83) in its LSU (99.65%) and ITS (98.08%). In its TUB2, it shares 89.61% identity with Exophiala brunnea (CBS 587.66). However, not enough TUB2 data are available to make conclusions about relationships, based on this gene region. Our tree topology (Fig. 1) is similar to Wang et al. (2019), although these authors did not include E. brunnea (CBS 587.66) in their analysis. In our study, E. brunnea (CBS 587.66) is clustered with V. compacta (CBS 268.75) with poor support (Fig. 1 ).

Figures

Figure 1. Phylogenetic tree generated from RAxML analysis of a combined ITS, LSU and TUB 2 dataset. ML bootstrap (BS) support values ≥ 60 % and Bayesian PP ≥ 0.95 are indicated above branches as MLBS / PP. Paecilomyces fulvus (CBS 146.48) and Byssochlamys lagunculariae (CBS 100.11) serve as outgroup taxa. Type strains are highlighted in bold; the new species is shown in blue bold.

Figure 2. Veronaea aquatica (HFJAU 0739, holotype) a Submerged bamboo; b Colonies on submerged bamboo culm; c, d Colony on PDA from above and below; e-h Conidiophores, conidiogenous cells and conidia; note the scars (arrowed in e, d); i-k Conidia. Scale bars: b = 100 μm, e-k = 10 μm.