Thermophilous fungi in Port Blair soils

Abstract

Soils were collected from eight different sites of saline marshy soils of Port Blair situated in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, India. A total of 93 333 colony-forming units representing 46 species of thermophilous fungi were isolated by the soil dilution method. The fungi were tabulated in order of ecological importance based on their frequency, relative density, and presence in the selected sites of this study. This is apparently the first study of these fungi from the Port Blair soils. Of the 46 species, Mucor miehei, Rhizopus oligosporus, Thermoascus crustaceous, T. thermophilus, and Trichoderma pseudokoningii are new records for India and Acremonium terricola, Aspergillus acculeatus, A. nidulans var. latus, and Sporotrichum thermophile are isolated from Indian soils for the first time. The temperature responses of the fungi revealed 14 microthermophiles and 22 thermotolerant and 10 true thermophilic species. Thirteen species of thermophilous fungi have been reported in addition to those already recorded in the literature.