Additions to Taiwan fungal flora 2: Ophiosphaerella taiwanica sp. nov.

Abstract

The genus Ophiosphaerella contains 14 formerly illustrated species and is characterized by papillated ascomata bearing fissitunicate cylindrical asci frequently narrower near the base, with a short furcate pedicel and filamentous, pale brown, multi-septate ascospores without swollen cells or separating into part spores. We describe an Ophiosphaerella taxon that is new to science isolated from Yushania niitakayamensis in Cilai Mountain, Taiwan. We conducted polyphasic methods using single and multi-locus (ITS, LSU, SSU, and tef1-α) phylogenetic reconstruction united with morphology to evaluate the natural classification of the novel taxon. The results show that our Ophiosphaerella isolates are different from closely related species O. aquaticus and O. agrostidis based on distinct size differences of the ascomata, asci, ascospores, host and DNA sequences data, thus should be recognised here as a new taxon Ophiosphaerella taiwanica sp. nov.