Catabotryaceae Petr., Mycotaxon 39: 83 (1990)

MycoBank number: MB 90924; Index Fungorum number: IF 90924; Facesoffungi number: FoF 01372; 2 species.

Saprobic on tropical monocotyledons. Sexual morph: Stromata solitary or irregularly scattered, conspicuous, multi-loculate, superficial, with base slightly penetrating the epidermis at regular intervals, discoid to pulvinate, reddish brown to black, surface scurfy, flat or slightly convex. Ascomata deeply imbedded in stromatic columns, globose, with a long, periphysate, ostiolar neck. Peridium thick, composed of several reddish brown outer layer cells of textura globosa and textura epidermoidea, with pale brown to hyaline internal cells of textura angularis. Paraphyses hypha-like, numerous, tapering towards the apex, not embedded in a gelatinous matrix. Asci 8-spored, unitunicate, broad cylindrical, short pedicellate, apically rounded or truncate, with a J-, discoid, refractive, apical ring. Ascospores bi-seriate, hyaline, 1-celled, ellipsoidal to cylindrical, smooth-walled. Asexual morph: Undetermined.

Type genus – Catabotrys Theiss. & Syd.

Notes – Catabotryaceae was validated by Barr (1990b) following Petrak’s (1954) invalid publication, which is monotypic and accommodates a single species Catabotrys deciduum. Barr (1990b) considered the centrum of Catabotrys as similar to that of taxa in Sordariales, and therefore proposed a monotypic family Catabotryaceae to accommodate and further placed it in Sordariales. Hyde & Cannon (1999) suggested Catabotryaceae could be included in Xylariales, as the centrum and stromatic features are more similar to Xylariaceae and Diatrypaceae. With phylogenetic analysis of the taxa in Sordariales, Catabotryaceae has been found transitory and placed in Sordariomycetidae family incertae sedis (Huhndorf et al. 2004b, Miller & Huhndorf 2005) and assigned in Amplistromatales (Maharachchikumbura et al. 2015). In a study of ranking fungi by using divergence estimates (Hyde et al. 2017a), Catabotryaceae has been shown to have a stem age of 165 MYA and therefore can be considered as an order. In this study the stem age was 171.92 MYA and therefore we place Catabotryaceae in a new order Catabotryales (Fig. 2).

Figure 2 – The maximum clade credibility (MCC) tree, using the same dataset from Fig. 1. This analysis was performed in BEAST v1.10.2. The crown age of Sordariomycetes was set with Normal distribution, mean = 250, SD = 30, with 97.5% of CI = 308.8 MYA, and crown age of Dothideomycetes with Normal distribution mean = 360, SD = 20, with 97.5% of CI = 399 MYA. The substitution models were selected based on jModeltest2.1.1; GTR+I+G for LSU, rpb2 and SSU, and TrN+I+G for tef1 (the model TrN is not available in BEAUti 1.10.2, thus we used TN93). Lognormal distribution of rates was used during the analyses with uncorrelated relaxed clock model. The Yule process tree prior was used to model the speciation of nodes in the topology with a randomly generated starting tree. The analyses were performed for 100 million generations, with sampling parameters every 10000 generations. The effective sample sizes were checked in Tracer v.1.6 and the acceptable values are higher than 200. The first 20% representing the burn-in phase were discarded and the remaining trees were combined in LogCombiner 1.10.2., summarized data and estimated in TreeAnnotator 1.10.2. Bars correspond to the 95% highest posterior density (HPD) intervals. The scale axis shows divergence times as millions of years ago (MYA).

Figure 2 – Continued.

Figure 2 – Continued.

Genera

  • Catabotrys