Cladophialophora abundans P. Feng, V.A. Vicente, Najafz., van den Ende, Stielow, Badali, Boeger & de Hoog, Mycol. Progr. 13(2): 386 (2013) [2014]
Index Fungorum number: IF 803489; MycoBank number: MB 803489; Facesoffungi number: FoF 09157; Fig. 1
Saprobic on submerged decaying wood in a freshwater. Sexual morph Undetermined. Asexual morph Hyphomycetous. Hyphae 2.5–4.5 μm wide, irregularly septate, straight or bent, smooth, thin-walled, hyaline to pale brown, guttulate, branched, with formation of hyphal strands, and differentiated ellipsoidal to cylindrical conidiophores with conidial chains. Conidiophores semi-macronematous, pale olivaceous to brown, septate, oblong to cylindrical. Conidiogenous cells holoblastic, mono- or polyblastic, terminal or intercalary. Conidial chains forming laterally or terminally on undifferentiated hyphae, with profuse, strongly coherent conidial chains. Conidia 4.5–7 × 3.5–5.5 μm (x̅=5.9×4.5 μm, n=30), pale olivaceous to brown, smooth and thin-walled, globose, ovoidal and ellipsoidal, aseptate, guttulate; conidial scars slightly pigmented. Chlamydospores and yeast cells absent.
Culture characteristics – Colonies growing on MEA, reaching 30–35 mm in 2 weeks at 25 °C. Mycelia superficial, irregularly circular, with entire to undulate margin, flat, smooth, from above pale brown, from below dark brown. Sporulation produced in culture within 2 weeks.
Material examined – THAILAND, Phuket Province, Thalang District, Mai Khao, on submerged decaying wood in a mangrove habitat, 5 May 2019, M.S. Calabon, 0506HY3 (MFLU 21-0118, new geographical record), living culture, MFLUCC 21-0105.
GenBank numbers – ITS=MT864354, LSU=MT860432.
Notes – Cladophialophora abundans was introduced by Feng et al. (2014) to accommodate cladophialophora-like isolates from a Brazilian mangrove environment. The species was isolated from the thorn of Dioscorea multiflora and muddy burrows of the mangrove-land crab (Ucides cordatus) (Pie et al. 2011; Feng et al. 2014). The phylogenetic analysis of a combined LSU and ITS sequence data shows that C. abundans (MFLUCC 21-0105) clusters with the ex-type strain of C. abundans (CBS 126736) with 100% MLBS, 100% MPBS, 1.00 BYPP support (Fig. 2). Cladophialophora abundans (MFLUCC 21-0105; Fig. 1) resembles C. abundans when it comes to the shapes and sizes of conidia (4.5–7×3.5–5.5 μm vs. 4.5–6×2–3.5 μm) and hyphal width (2.5–4.5 μm vs. 2–3.5 μm). There are no base pair differences of the ITS nucleotides which indicates that the new strain is C. abundans (Jeewon and Hyde 2016). Thus, a record of C. abundans from Thailand is reported.
Figure 1 – Cladophialophora abundans (MFLUCC 21-0105, new geographical record). a Culture on MEA from surface and reverse. b, c Long strongly coherent conidial chains. d–g Conidiophores and conidia. h, i Conidia. Scale bars: b=100 μm, c–g=50 μm, h, i=20 μm
Figure 2 – Phylogram generated from maximum likelihood analysis based on combined LSU and ITS sequence data representing the species of Cladophialophora. Related sequences are taken from Kiyuna et al. (2018). Rhopalophora clavispora (CBS 637.73) and Fusichalara minuta (CBS 709.88) were used as the outgroup taxa. Fifty-three taxa are included in the combined analyses which comprised 1041 characters (502 characters for LSU, 539 characters for ITS) after alignment. The best scoring RAxML tree with a final likelihood value of − 9519.130038 is presented. The matrix had 524 distinct alignment patterns, with 16.53% of undetermined characters or gaps. Estimated base frequencies were as follows: A=0.236745, C=0.249453, G=0.269107, T=0.244695; substitution rates: AC=1.891141, AG=3.179450, AT=1.427526, CG=0.913317, CT=6.628918, GT=1.000000; gamma distribution shape parameter α=0.260996. The MP analysis resulted a single most parsimonious tree (TL=1789, CI=0.455, RI=0.710, RC=0.323, HI=0.545). Bootstrap support values for MLBS and MPBS equal to or greater than 75% and BYPP equal to or greater than 0.95 are given above the nodes. Ex-type strains are in bold and newly generated sequences are in blue