Ascoglobospora Abdel-Wahab, gen. nov.

Index Fungorum number: IF 559818; Mycobank number: MB 559818; Facesoffungi number: FoF 12719

Etymology – Named after the globose-shaped asci of the fungus.

Saprobic on decaying driftwood. Sexual morph: Ascomata globose to subglobose, erumpent to superficial, membranous, hyaline to light-brown, ostiolate, papillate, surrounded by septate hyphae. Neck hyaline to light-brown in color, cylindrical, periphysate. Peridium one-layered, hyaline, forming textura-angularis, cell layers consists of elongated, thick-walled, polygonal hyaline cells. Catenophyses present. Asci eight-spored, subglobose, thin-walled, deliquesce early, without an apical apparatus. Ascospores ellipsoidal, with rounded ends, multiseriate, one-septate, not constricted at the septum, hyaline, thick-walled, with bipolar, hamate, apical appendages. Appendages extend beyond the median septa, uncoil in water to form long filaments. Asexual morph: unknown.

Type species – Ascoglobospora marina Abdel-Wahab.

Notes – Undescribed marine ascomycete with early deliquescing subglobose asci with uncoiling polar appendages to the ascospores was recorded from driftwood collected from a rocky beach at Umikaze Park, Yokohama, Japan and listed as Aniptodera sp. (MF966) in Abdel-Wahab (2011). Molecular phylogenetic analyses of the combined SSU and LSU rDNA placed the new taxon with Aniptosporopsis lignatilis in all the analyses performed with high statistical support (100 ML/100 MP/100 BYPP, Fig. 1). Other taxa with polar uncoiling appendages in the clade include: Aniptodera chesapeakensis, A. aquibella and Ascosacculus heteroguttulatus (Fig. 1). Ascoglobospora marina cannot be placed in the genus Aniptosporopsis because it has an early deliquescing asci that are subglobose in shape, thin-walled and without an apical apparats. Aniptosporopsis lignatilis has clavate asci with a flattened thickened tip, with apical pore, plasmalemma retraction, pedunculate, persistent, with active spore release (Hyde 1992; Jones et al. 2017). A comparison of the 572 nucleotides of the D1/D2 region of the LSU rDNA of Ascoglobospora marina and Aniptosporopsis lignatilis shows 30 base pair differences (6%), which justifies the erection of a new genus. The pairwise distance of the partial 28S rDNA of genera in the Halosphaeriaceae generally ranges between 3 and 9% (Jones et al. 2017).

Species